


Coming here forever

by In_folly_ripe_in_reason_rotten (If_all_the_world_and_love_were_young)



Category: Dawson's Creek, FiFA World Cup 2014 - Fandom, Young Americans (TV)
Genre: Boarding School, Drama, F/M, Humor, Multi, Rawley Academy, Rebirth/rejuvenation, Sexual Content, Surreal, Teen Romance, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-09 00:12:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 33,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4326330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/If_all_the_world_and_love_were_young/pseuds/In_folly_ripe_in_reason_rotten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She gave up happily-ever-after to help him love the viewers, reliving that summer we'll never forget.</p>
<p>But once every four years, football gives them off a whole day off ... and sometimes, unexpected guests.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Scene 1 - Nobody's watching

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Lest faith turn to despair: Act I - Tuesday](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1438123) by [If_all_the_world_and_love_were_young](https://archiveofourown.org/users/If_all_the_world_and_love_were_young/pseuds/If_all_the_world_and_love_were_young). 



> The original drama,  _Young Americans_ , by Steven Antin, may be viewed online [here](http://www.youtube.com/user/IckyGrub). Antin’s public comments on it may be read [here](https://sites.google.com/site/rawleyrevisited/antin-on-ya).

EXT – BOATHOUSE DOCK, RAWLEY ACADEMY FOR BOYS. DAY.

(A sunny – and, by Massachusetts standards, warm – July afternoon.  [SCOUT Calhoun](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/6Ha8EeYoTyTqjt-1KgnZqwFEZSi3SzKe0_G8Py87wlI), in white swimming trunks, [WILL Krudski](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/jRRqfO_yJCHD-HMZqh5h2HtNDR1N58cftgd2vVObp-o), in blue trunks, and [HAMILTON Fleming](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/fZiwqP5ZqGdq9Cpuag6jbbFkh8fCtg-ep6PtxNxzKLg), in red trunks, sit at the end of the dock, watching a soccer match on a laptop. Except for a family of ducks, no one else is in sight.

HAMILTON, in his navy blue muscle shirt with the book-and-crowns of ~~Oxford University~~ Rawley Academy embroidered on its front, sits between SCOUT and WILL, both shirtless. 

On the dock behind them rest a camera, three pairs of topsiders, mobile phones protruding from two of them, a bottle of sunscreen, and  three white towels displaying, in blue, the Rawley crest and motto, _VERITAS EST VIRTUS_.)

WILL: Ham, she’ll be here.

HAMILTON: She should be here already.

WILL: If you watched the game, it might take your mind off that.

HAMILTON: It’s a ball sport.

SCOUT: It’s the World Cup final.

HAMILTON: And it’s dull. Twenty minutes and no score.

WILL: Good soccer’s low-scoring, Ham.

HAMILTON (glumly): Like my love life.

SCOUT: She’s screwed you witless for almost fourteen years, Fleming.

HAMILTON: Only when nobody’s watching.

SCOUT: That _is_ traditional.

HAMILTON: But except for today, somebody, somewhere, is _always_ watching. Whenever Jake and I get something good going, some girl in some bizarre place like Persia or New Zealand gets the urge to watch us, and I have to stop everything and play the confused virgin love god.

WILL: You’re not the one who has to wear a binder.

SCOUT: And it could be worse. You and Jacqueline could have more air time - like Bella and me.

WILL: And if you don’t stop whining, I might re-write the script so that you do.

HAMILTON (flattered): You wouldn’t?

WILL (shrugging): Fourteen years ago, making viewers need to run off to their bedrooms would have kept them from finishing an episode.  But now … Oh my god – the German goal’s wide open.

SCOUT: Yeh, so much for scoreless. … No! I can’t believe Higuain missed that.

WILL: Neither can he, obviously.

HAMILTON: Some girl will love him tonight anyhow. … Rowing is _soooo_ much better. 

SCOUT: Will and I agree, Ham. You’ve noticed we’re rowers?

WIL: Like, your seven and your six? Straining to keep up with the pace that our truly-loving cox and stroke set for us?

SCOUT:  Spare us the symbolism, roomie. We all got it years ago. … But Ham, until rowing shells are as cheap as leather balls, and lakes as plentiful as fields, soccer will be more popular.

 HAMILTON: Anyone who can afford to watch ball sports could afford to watch rowing.

SCOUT: You like American football.

HAMILTON: I like tackling Jake.

SCOUT (to WILL): He’s hopeless.

WILL: Yeh, but lovable.

SCOUT: That too. … (To HAMILTON:) Turn around.

WILL: And ditch the wife-beater – unless you’d rather watch ball-kicking than let us help you think about Jacqueline.

HAMILTON (turning around to face away from the laptop): Thanks. 

SCOUT (reaching back, grabbing two towels and the sunscreen): What are friends for, right Will?

WILL (sliding his hands under HAMILTON’s shirt): Uh – huh. And this way, maybe you’ll stop whining and let Scout and me watch the game.

SCOUT (spreading a towel out behind HAMILTON): Your problem, dean’s son, isn’t just that your girl isn’t here …

WILL (sliding a hand inside HAMILTON’s shirt): It’s that you need to be watched.

SCOUT: And no-one is watching us today.  

WILL (caressing under the shirt): You’re jealous of the ball-kickers.

SCOUT (slowly lifting HAMILTON’s shirt, nuzzling his neck): Because loving Jacqueline is how you love the viewers. And to let you do that is why our scholarship-boy scriptwriter dreamed this school up.

WILL (helping SCOUT pull the shirt over HAMILTON’s head):  And you’ll do it again this year …

SCOUT: So lie back and think about that.

WILL: And just to make you feel better, we’ll watch you …

SCOUT (tossing the shirt near the topsiders): With one eye …

WILL: While we watch the ball-kicking with the other.

HAMILTON: Totally romantic. True love.

SCOUT (gently pushing HAMILTON down onto his back): It’s the World Cup final.

WILL: Deal with it.

SCOUT (placing the second towel under HAMILTON’s head as a pillow): Comfy?

HAMILTON ( folding his hands behind his head): Mmmm …

SCOUT (squirting some sunscreen onto a hand): Good. (He passes the bottle to WILL.)

WILL (taking the sunscreen): What a pass! … (Putting some sunscreen onto a hand:) That Messi guy just never blows them, does he?

SCOUT (rubbing HAMILTON’s chest): Takes two to complete a pass, guy – teamwork.

HAMILTON (closing his eyes): Teamwork is eight guys in a shell all trying to be one body for a girl.

WILL (rubbing HAMILTON’s stomach): Works even better when the stroke’s not the only rower who knows the cox is a girl.

HAMILTON: Mmmm … the last thirteen summers have been even better than the first, haven’t they?

WILL: Well yeh! We’ve been, uh …

SCOUT: Doing what teenagers were made to do ... when no one’s watching.

HAMILTON (sighing): Like now. We only get one day every four years all to ourselves. And this year, it’s the day she always comes back – our fourteenth anniversary.

WILL: Ham, it’s not the anniversary of when you first bedded her …

SCOUT: After making her wait till she’d accepted admission to another school, as a girl, for fall term.

WILL: It’s not even the anniversary of when you first kissed her …

SCOUT: After keeping her waiting for a full month while you angsted about being gay.

WILL: It’s just the anniversary of the day you first saw her.

SCOUT: She didn’t even see you.

WILL: And you didn’t even talk to her.

SCOUT: And all you did say, just to yourself, was “Nice bike.”

HAMILTON: What was I supposed to say? “Hot boy bod?” She was cross-dressing. And I’m straight.

WILL: Slightly overstated, lover. … How about: “I prefer my guys with girls helping”?

SCOUT: Not bad. You might try that at the cotillion this year, Ham. As a retort from a guy in a dinner jacket to  a girl in taffeta who’s just told him that he and another guy are obviously in love, it might beat blurting, “We’re not …”, and then sputtering.  

HAMILTON: Droll. I have to at least _try_ to sound fifteen years old.

SCOUT: You’re right. Stick with the motorcycle fetish. It’s authentic.

HAMILTON: It’s symbolic. Jake’s bike is a metaphor for her personality.  That’s why …

SCOUT: Yeh, yeh, I get that. I’ve had fourteen years to figure it out. And what I couldn’t figure out on my own, I’ve teased out of my roommate.

WILL: It’s like poetry, Scout.  You can’t take things at face value.  You’ve gotta dig deeper to find the good stuff, the meaning. And if you can’t find it, you dig even deeper – or you take me to bed.  

HAMILTON (purring): You guys are _soooo_ minty.

SCOUT: You and Mark aren’t?

WILL: And how could we not be? Fourteen years of going to the last all-boys’ boarding prep school in Massachusetts …

SCOUT: And being half in love with your roommate …

WILL: And totally in love with a cross-dressing girl and a guy pretending to be gay for her …

SCOUT: While still having teenage bodies and hormones …

WILL: But the sexual experience and addiction of twenty-nine-year olds …

SCOUT: All to tell a story about a straight guy who passes the test of true love by being willing to be gay.

WILL: It’s a wonder it hasn’t been even gayer than it has.

SCOUT: Uh, Bella? … Grace? … Jacqueline? Not to mention Lena and …

WILL: Alright, not entirely a wonder. … Wow! Did you see that header?

SCOUT: It’s what Klose does, guy.

HAMILTON (sighing): She’s never come late before. She should have shown up on her bike, like, four hours ago, before the lake run, while I was still perched over the front door of the boys’ school. 

SCOUT: Ham, she’ll be here.

HAMILTON: But I like the “Nice bike!” scene.

WILL (hand-grazing HAMILTON’s now well-oiled abdomen): And you get to re-enact it whenever anyone watches it.

HAMILTON: I like that being the way I first see her every year.  It’s the best scene in the whole show.

SCOUT: Most people think the best scene is when you finally kiss her at the cotillion and she turns into a girl.

WILL: Or the one the next morning when you find the guts to commit to her.

HAMILTON: I find that whole night kinda stressful. And artistically, those scenes can’t compare.

SCOUT: For irony? Like checking that the men’s room toilet stalls are empty just before you first kiss the guy you’ve fallen in love with? And saying you’re throwing caution to the winds even as you do that?

HAMILTON: For symbolism, Calhoun. The “Nice bike!” scene is Krudski’s masterpiece.  It identifies the viewers with Jake, tells them it’s about loving them, not just her …

SCOUT: Yeh, yeh, by your pointing your camera at the film camera when you first see her.  We all got all that years ago.

HAMILTON: And it identifies me with the school.  And it ties in with the words scrawled on Finn’s chalkboard when Will writes his essay about why he needs to be a Rawley, even though he, uh …

WILL:  “Cheated on the entrance exam”? Ham, you can say it. It’s just a metaphor.

SCOUT: Yeh, for your being decades too old to attend a prep school unless – Duh! – you can show you’re a writer, here to write the story – the story of how Ham loves Jacqueline way better than I loved Bella.

HAMILTON (opening his eyes, unfolding his arms): Bella was in love with Will – she just didn’t see it. … (Wrapping his hands around SCOUT’s and WILL’s waists:) And Scout, you’ve loved Grace beautifully.

SCOUT (caressing HAMILTON’s chest):  Grace makes it easy. And I’ve had help. Close your eyes.

(HAMILTON complies, purring.)

SCOUT (to WILL): But I still can’t believe how long it took me to get that metaphor. … And that incest thing you hit Bella and me with …

WILL (shrugging): I wanted you for myself.

SCOUT: Funny.

WILL: It worked.  It made you both see you didn’t love each other enough to risk what you had in order to find out whether it was true.

SCOUT: I know. … And it’s turned out beautifully. Things here always do, thanks to you, old dreamer.

WILL: I get help.

SCOUT (smiling down at HAMILTON): Like from the guy who put us together?

WILL: And from the guy who helped me not give up on this dream when I first got here.

SCOUT (leaning in across HAMILTON): And you always will. Rooming with you forever is …

WILL (also leaning in): Totally Feng Shui?

SCOUT: Yeh.

(The incipient kiss above HAMILTON’s torso is interrupted by the sound of footsteps on planks – [Forrest RYDER](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pd2ZBWAGr6Jta1Gf-rrMYvWOHGMa51mhbC1lqe55dko) sauntering jauntily out the dock in Union-Jack board shorts and topsiders, Rawley-crested towel in hand, a tasteful upmarket picnic backpack slung over one shoulder.)

RYDER: Hullo, fresh-faced youth of America!

WILL (pulling back): Give us a break, Forrest. You stopped being an ass-bite thirteen and a half years ago.

RYDER (slipping out of his topsiders): Why, thank you, William. … (Setting down his backpack:) Still, it never hurts to rehearse one’s lines.

SCOUT: You know your lines cold. We all do.

RYDER: Have had a bit of practice, haven’t we? … And don’t let me interrupt a tender moment. Calhoun, why don’t you cuddle with Krudski and let me do my job?

SCOUT (leaving HAMILTON to sit next to WILL): He’s yours. And he’s whining.

RYDER (lying down next to HAMILTON): It’s what he does. … (Leaning in to kiss HAMILTON:) Hullo, lover.

HAMILTON (pulling back, arching an eyebrow): Your job?

RYDER: And my pleasure. … (He gives HAMILTON a light, affectionate kiss.)

HAMILTON (breaking off): Thanks for coming.

RYDER: She’ll be here. But until she is, you’re still mine to take care of for her.

HAMILTON (ruffling RYDER’s hair): You’ve done it well.

RYDER: Let’s spare Calhoun and Krudski the mushy stuff, shall we?

WILL (wrapping an arm around SCOUT): Don’t mind us.

RYDER: Still no score?

WILL: Nope. And still kinda weird. Germany’s had the ball most of the time, but Argentina keeps getting into scoring position more often.

RYDER (drily): I’ve noticed, William.

HAMILTON: You’re into this, too?

RYDER: Fleming, I’m British.

HAMILTON: You’re my cox.

RYDER: Only till Jacqueline comes back.

HAMILTON: Rowers don’t watch ball sports.

RYDER: Hamilton, look at the screen. Tell me what you see.

HAMILTON: Two teams of eleven guys trying to kick a ball into the other team’s net.

RYDER: You’re seeing the same thing everyone else in the world who can find a way to watch it is seeing. And those who can’t are hearing about it by radio.

HAMILTON (glumly): I know.

RYDER: That’s why it’s about love.

HAMILTON: Love? Some of them bite each other.

RYDER: Hamilton, a year, two years, three years from now, in any bar or café anywhere in the world, no matter where, I can talk about this match, and whoever I’m with will know what I’m talking about.

HAMILTON (after a pause): An ice-breaker?

RYDER: Common ground. Not the best we could have, but it’s what we do have.

HAMILTON (after a pause): Got it. Thanks.

RYDER: That’s what second-years are for. To impart wisdom to first-years.

HAMILTON: Droll. (He rolls over and starts to watch the match.)

RYDER (rubbing HAMILTON’s back): So what’s he been whining about today?

WILL: Jake’s being late, missing the “Nice bike!” scene.

SCOUT: You arrived just in time to spare us the lecture on how it’s modeled on the last line of the Dylan song on Finn’s chalkboard when Will writes his essay. And how that and his camera tell viewers that his love speaks like silence, through images, not words, yada yada yada …

RYDER (looking sidelong at HAMILTON): So he hasn’t told you what’s really eating him?

SCOUT: What?

RYDER: He wonders whether Jacqueline will come today – when nobody’s watching.

WILL: You’ve told him how absurd that is?

RYDER: Half the night. He’s bought into the symbolism so hard that he wonders whether she only comes back here to help him love the viewers.

SCOUT: Ham, that’s old – really old. When we were sixteen, you knew better.

WILL: Yeh. The egghead stuff – when it gets in the way, ditch it. … She loves you, Ham. That’s why she comes back here in drag every year to help you love everybody – because she knows you need to do that.

HAMILTON: She’s not here.

RYDER (nuzzling): Mmmm … but I am. Why don’t you go inside and start us a shower?

HAMILTON (turning toward RYDER): You’d miss the World Cup final … to shower with me?

RYDER: You’re lonely and troubled.

HAMILTON (leaning in): True love.

RYDER: And my girl isn’t here yet either.

HAMILTON: Oh …

RYDER (kissing HAMILTON’s forehead): Go. When the water’s hot, I’ll be there.

(HAMILTON smiles feebly, stands, slips into his topsiders, picks up the camera. As he walks toward toward the boathouse, SCOUT and WILL turn to watch him.)

SCOUT (to RYDER): He took his camera.

RYDER (shrugging): He finds me photogenic.

(HAMILTON disappears into the boathouse. SCOUT, WILL and RYDER turn to watch the match.)

WILL: She’s in place?

RYDER: Good to go.

SCOUT: Her stuff?

RYDER: In her room, unpacked – her oh-so-symbolic _Vanishing Point_ poster already on her wall.

SCOUT: And her bike?

RYDER: In the secret hiding place, waiting to be confiscated next week.

WILL: Thanks.

RYDER: My pleasure. But you might thank me by helping me win a small wager I’ve made.

SCOUT: What?

RYDER: I’ll tell you when Bella and Grace are here.

WILL: Did they get Sleeping Beauty packed off with Anne and Mark?

RYDER: Yep. Wanna tell me who she is, and what that’s about?

WILL: When she’s awake, and back here.

SCOUT: So when are Bella and Grace coming?

RYDER: As soon as you text them. And they’re bringing …

(From inside the boathouse, HAMILTON’s voice – loud even at the end of the dock:)

**OH MY GOD – JAKE?**

SCOUT (reaching back for his mobile phone): Great, now we can watch the game.

WILL: With appropriate company.

SCOUT (texting): For sure.

RYDER: Heads up! Higuain’s at it again.

WILL: Oh wow! A goal!

RYDER: Not so fast …

SCOUT: Off sides? No …

RYDER: He was.

Scout Calhoun (Mark Famiglietti) and Will Krudski (Rodney Scott)   
in episode seven of _Young Americans_

*          *           *


	2. Scene 2 - What dreams may come

EXT – BOATHOUSE DOCK, RAWLEY ACADEMY FOR BOYS.  DAY.

(The trees on the town bank cast longer early-evening shadows on the lake. A canoe floats beside the dock, its mooring rope hitched to a dock cleat.  Near WILL’s and SCOUT’s topsiders lie two short beach robes, two pair of sandals, and a portable metal-case [Cavalier Junior Coca-Cola cooler](http://www.vintagevending.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/coke-airline-cooler.jpg) (made 1948-52), a bottle opener on its side.  A second identical cooler rests in the canoe.

The football match continues to play on the laptop, in front of which the three towels are now spread out, adjacent.  On them, heads toward the laptop, lie SCOUT, WILL, RYDER, [BELLA Banks](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d3jGA7vj6lEFlaMfSv3oY3zNxrcii2MjYt1j8WBenB8=w240-h179-p-no) and [GRACE Banks](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/5BgOBzNu-HKtf0ujw2M10rLq9EPAwRM6cZPylu2AZAk). Ryder lies in the center, face-up, his head cushioned on HAMILTON’s muscle shirt. BELLA and GRACE lie beside him, fronts-down at RYDER’s sides, bikini-clad with tops unstrapped, their chins cushioned on RYDER’s arms, each engaging RYDER’s torso with a hand. WILL lies beside BELLA, rubbing her back; SCOUT, lying beside GRACE, does the same for her. All five bodies glisten with sunscreen.

GRACE looks about seventeen years old, baby fat gone, stunning. BELLA’s bikini is red; GRACE’s a dark blue top spangled with white stars, her bottom red-and-white stripes.

Around the group are five half-drunk Cokes in glass bottles.  The picnic backpack is open, its front folded down to reveal a service-for-four of plates, cloth napkins, and silverware. Two of the plates are set in front of the group, one bearing half-eaten bunch of grapes, the other a half-eaten loaf of dark bread, gouda cheese, and a knife.)

BELLA (nudging RYDER): Check it out.

WILL: Palacio’s through the German defense!

RYDER (twisting his head back to watch): Nah, Neuer’s coming out.

SCOUT: Wide! … Amazing save.

BELLA: Yeh. Neuer’s bold.

GRACE: And _soooo_ hot.

BELLA (feeding RYDER a grape): I prefer rowers.

GRACE: Get real.

BELLA: He’d do, in a pinch.

HAMILTON, in his swimming trunks and topsiders, camera slung over a shoulder, and [JAKE Pratt](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/BHFhtEsEASCY8g8fzkE6aMd7f-yOSzlJmHR1Tz1CyqE), her hair much too long to pass as a boy and in a white Rawley-crested beach robe and sandals, approach from the boathouse, hair wet, holding hands.)

RYDER (to HAMILTON): Miss me?

HAMILTON (slipping his topsiders off): Droll. You can’t watch the game like that.

RYDER: I listen. And Grace and Bella tell me when to crane my neck.

HAMILTON (handing his camera to JAKE): Right. … (Lying down atop RYDER:) Thank you.

(He kisses RYDER lightly, then caresses his head.  BELLA and GRACE turn their heads to nuzzle HAMILTON’s.  JAKE, after setting down the camera and slipping out of her beach robe and sandals – revealing a [stars-and-stripes bikini](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/6XJTJO6474_yrMVNJCv7liXHX9TGOExOqYhoCqThRA4) identical to GRACE’s – clears her throat.)

HAMILTON (to RYDER, jerking his head back toward JAKE): Think you could make do with her?

RYDER: I’ll manage somehow.

(HAMILTON looks at BELLA. She smiles. He slides off RYDER to lie between her legs.)

JAKE (lying down atop RYDER, nuzzling his stomach): Better.

RYDER: Mmmm … much. … (To HAMILTON:) No offense.

HAMILTON (nuzzling BELLA’s back): None taken.

BELLA (purring, caressing JAKE’s head): Hi, Jacqueline.

GRACE (turning to smile at JAKE): Welcome back.

JAKE (fingering GRACE’s bikini strap): Gracie … you didn’t?  

GRACE (shrugging): You’re my fashion icon.

SCOUT (sliding between GRACE’s legs, leaning into JAKE:) And mine. No guy looks better in a dinner jacket. (He kisses JAKE.)

WILL: Ham – Bella and Grace brought some Cokes from the gas station.  Why don’t you get Jacqueline and you a drink?

HAMILTON: Thanks, girls.

RYDER: And there’s rum in the backpack – and a funnel.

HAMILTON (sliding off BELLA toward the cooler, sighing): Why does whatever we drink always have to look like Coke?

SCOUT (briefly breaking off): Because this school’s biggest donor turns out not to be my family. (He resumes kissing JAKE.)

HAMILTON (taking two glass Coke bottles out of the cooler): Couldn’t we throw caution to the wind, just once?

WILL (sliding between BELLA’s legs): You want the funding to evaporate?

HAMILTON (opening the Cokes): Nobody’s watching.

BELLA: Too risky. And you’re whining.

WILL: Surprise. … (To SCOUT:) Mind if I cut in?

SCOUT (breaking off): Just put a sock on it.

WILL: Funny. … (To JAKE:) Welcome back, beautiful. (He kisses JAKE.)

HAMILTON (funneling rum into the Coke bottles): I thought the ball game might be over.

GRACE: It’s in extra time.

HAMILTON: Still no score?

SCOUT: Nope.

HAMILTON (returning the rum and funnel to the backpack): Thrilling.

RYDER: You’re getting it.

WILL (breaking off from JAKE): So Ham, was our substitute for the “Nice bike!” scene satisfactory?

HAMILTON (handling a Coke bottle to JAKE): Irony? In my shower-scene end is my beginning?

WILL (shrugging): We’re addicted.

HAMILTON: You’re artists. … (Handing a Coke bottle to JAKE:) To our friends.

JAKE (taking the Coke): And to thanking them tonight.

HAMILTON: When nobody’s watching.

(HAMILTON and JAKE clink their Coke bottles and drink.)

JAKE (to SCOUT): So what did you guys do without me today?

SCOUT: Besides listen to Fleming whine? … Same thing we’ve done every year for fourteen years. … (Hand-grazing GRACE’s side:) I carefully positioned myself behind Will’s dad’s pickup, so that when it pulled out, I’d appear right where his parents had been …

GRACE (caressing RYDER’s chest with a hand): Will’s new family – so symbolic!

BELLA (helping her): And with your oh-so-foreshadowing black “Raven” bike.

WILL (stroking BELLA’s back): Then Scout genteelly pretended not to have noticed what a schmuck my dad is, introduced himself, told me that he and I are roommates, and walked me into the school for the first time through the front door, right under Hamilton …

SCOUT: So that even the most clueless viewers, for whom Ham’s being the dean’s son doesn’t do the job, will get that he personifies the school.

WILL: Then Scout took me to our room, gave me the better bed, and generally made verbal love to me …

SCOUT: Until Ham came by and gave us his shtick about our room being perfectly Feng Shui, doors facing east, window facing north.

WILL: And we pretended to be too dense to notice that our room’s laid out so that even if our door did face east, our window would face south, not north …

SCOUT: Or to know that Feng Shui is way subtler and more complex than that anyhow …

WILL: Or to get that the “art of placement” that he’s talking about, using Feng Shui as a metaphor, is the art of roommate assignment …

SCOUT: Bragging that the school he personifies has matched us perfectly. 

GRACE: And it has.

SCOUT: Yeh. … And by not noticing any of that, Will and I let any viewer who’s as utterly oblivious as we’re pretending to be think that Ham’s just a lonely, socially inept jerk trying, badly, to make friends.

WILL: Establishing, right from the start, the pervasive irony of the show – that, as Jake, Bella and I keep saying, “It’s not what it looks like.” … (Wincing:) Ewww … Schürrle let it go out.

RYDER (briefly turning his head to watch): He’s knackered. They all are. 

SCOUT: Then Will and I got dumped at Bella’s gas station in our boxers, and I pretended not to notice that the 1920s canopy design, the 1940s gas pumps, and the 1950s air pump, are all a bit out of synch.

BELLA: Like you’d pretended not to notice the 1930s Coke machine and the 1950 pickup truck this morning.

WILL: And I pretended not to notice that Bella and Scout were cribbing their flirt-banter from a [1970 love flick](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb4Rfj1wp0Q). Then Scout and I walked through the woods in our boxers …

SCOUT: And I pretended still to be too lost in my hormones to catch any hint of irony in Will’s telling me that the reason he’d never done anything with Bella was that he’d been too busy lusting after a three-hundred pound school nurse. Or to have any inkling that I’d spend the rest of the summer paying for that mistake …

WILL: Then we told each other more lies, to underscore that my answer to Scout’s question about Bella had been less than totally candid – pretending, of course, not to notice that dramatic effect …

SCOUT: And then Will hit me with his big confession that he’d “cheated on the entrance exam.” And I somehow managed not to say, “You mean you’re really decades too old to be here … like all the antiques at the gas station of the girl you just told me to keep my horny fifteen-year-old paws off?”

WILL: Scout, stop beating up on yourself. Nobody could see that the exam-cheating’s a metaphor until at least episode two, when I talk about time, and about feeling like I’m faking it.

SCOUT: Will, it didn’t take me a week. It took me seven years!  Six years after I’d already gotten that this was too good not to be somebody’s dream. Three years after I’d gotten that it was your dream. I didn’t get it until the eighth time I whined to you that I’d expected getting older to feel better than this, and you smiled, and said, “I’m pretty sure it will.” – Duh!

JAKE (handing her now half-empty Coke to SCOUT): Hey, no first-year preppie should find out before he’s twenty-three that his roommate is pushing fifty.

BELLA: Yeh, taken too soon, that sort of thing can nip a bromance in the bud.

GRACE: And then Bella and I wouldn’t be with guys who love each other.

BELLA: And that would not be perfect.

JAKE (resuming her attentions to RYDER’s abdomen): Definitely not Rawley.

SCOUT (to WILL, nuzzling GRACE): The weird part is – it’s never felt weird. As I figured out, it just made sense. It felt right. It clicked. It was you. And now … it’s hard to believe that fourteen years ago, I never saw any of it. Hard to believe I was ever that clueless, that … fifteen. Too young to pick up on any of it. 

GRACE: Too young even to notice even that things that are way too old are old at all? Tell me about it. I grew up in an antiques museum, and never noticed.

SCOUT (setting down JAKE’s Coke): And every year it gets harder to pretend still to be oblivious. … (Fondling JAKE’s hair:) Something new might help. Like Jacqueline with long hair during summer session. … (To HAMILTON:) You like?

HAMILTON (setting down his half-drunk Coke): Pity we’ll have to cut it this evening.

WILL: Maybe not.

HAMILTON: Your mom would open up her beauty salon on a Sunday evening?

WILL: For Jacqueline? Definitely. But maybe she doesn’t need a haircut.

HAMILTON (picking up the sunscreen bottle): Jake could wear a wig?

JAKE: I could just wear my hair – long.

HAMILTON (squirting sunscreen onto a hand): Right. And how would that work?

WILL (unfastening JAKE’s top): We’ve been thinking of doing a re-make this year – updating, changing with the times.

HAMILTON (slowly rubbing JAKE’s back, pressing her into RYDER): Last I checked, guys were not wearing their hair long this year.

BELLA (nuzzling RYDER’s bicep while pulling JAKE’s top free): No, but girls still are.

RYDER (arching slightly): Oh god …

GRACE (softly, to RYDER): Shhhh … Just think about Lena …

SCOUT: Ham, we’ve been thinking that this year, Jacqueline wouldn’t cross-dress.

HAMILTON (continuing to massage RYDER through JAKE): Brilliant. A nice, normal straight romance. No dramatic tension – and no viewers.

WILL (kissing BELLA’s back): No. Jacqueline would still be troubled. And she’d still need a miracle.

SCOUT: Specifically, for a gay guy to fall for her.

HAMILTON (stopping): You want me to pretend to be gay?

BELLA: Don’t you do that every year?

HAMILTON: Not to the viewers.

JAKE: You wouldn’t do that for me, Hammy?

HAMILTON (sputtering): No. … I mean yes … Of course I would, but …

JAKE: Mmmm … good. Keep rubbing, boy.

HAMILTON (resuming his back-rubbing): But with no cross-dressing …

BELLA: Ham, don’t worry. Someone will cross-dress.

HAMILTON: Who?

RYDER: You.

HAMILTON: Me? … Why?

WILL: To get into the girl’s school after visiting hours.

GRACE: You’ll pretend to be a townie girl.

BELLA: And Grace and I will teach you how to pull it off.

GRACE: With a little help from Will’s mom and her wigs.

HAMILTON: That’s so twisted.

BELLA: Jackie’s cross-dressed for fourteen years, Ham.  You wouldn’t do it for her?

HAMILTON: Give me a break. It wouldn’t work.

RYDER (eyes still closed, purring): Mmmm … Why not?

HAMILTON: Because even though I’d be giving up my sexual preference – my _pretended_ sexual preference – I wouldn’t be sacrificing any social status. No one would think less of me.

GRACE (to SCOUT): He’s _soooo_ behind the times.

BELLA: And so lacking in imagination.

SCOUT: Ham, you’ll be out. All us Rawley guys will be.

RYDER: And we’ll all be gutted by your defection to the other team.

HAMILTON (again stopping): We’d all be gay?

JAKE: It’s the last all-boys’ boarding school in Massachusetts, Hammy. Kinda makes sense, don’tcha think?

HAMILTON (again sputtering): Well … yeh … but …

JAKE: It’ll grow on you. Keep rubbing.

HAMILTON (again resuming his massaging): But what about Scout and Bella?

SCOUT: I fall for Will instead. True love at first sight. But at the end of episode one it turns out that the reason Will’s dad treats him so badly is that he thinks my dad is Will’s real father. So there we are for seven episodes, two gay roommates, hopelessly in love, cruelly separated by a false incest barrier …

HAMILTON: Scout, two guys can’t have kids. Who cares whether they’re related?

GRACE: Incest is incest, Hamilton. Ask your lawyer.

BELLA: Or your pastor. And it’s very much frowned on among self-respecting gays.

HAMILTON (to BELLA): Great. … So what do you do? Fall in love with Caroline Busse?

BELLA: No, Caroline and Paige are a number. All the Rawley girls are lesbians.

HAMILTON (wincing): Oh no …

GRACE: Except for Jacqueline.  That’s why she needs a townie girlfriend. … (Wiggling her eyebrows:) For guy talk.

BELLA: And Grace and I are townies.  We’re straight.

HAMILTON: So how do you get involved with anyone from Rawley?

GRACE: Bella and I meet these two cute guys, roommates, wandering around town in their boxers.

BELLA: We don’t think about sex, of course, ‘cause they’re from Rawley, so there’s no point …

GRACE: But we flirt, and become friends …

BELLA: And eventually they share their heartbreak with us …

GRACE: And we kindly suggest that bedding us, together, could be the next best thing to bedding each other.

WILL: So Scout and I try it, and decide that straight sex, with two nice girls and another guy you love, isn’t really so bad.

SCOUT: But back in the dorm room, when we’re alone …

WILL: And in the rowing shell …

SCOUT: And in class, and at the diner …

WILL: It’s still really hard.

SCOUT: Tragically, heart-breakingly hard.

HAMILTON: The world will weep. … And Sean?

JAKE: He’s your foil. The super-straight ripped blond townie hunk who has everything I want, but not what I need – a sexual preference he can sacrifice for me. I lead him on make you jealous, invite him to the drive-in with us …

HAMILTON: Gross. … So do I go to the cotillion in taffeta and kiss you in the girls’ room?

JAKE: No, on the veranda, in the moonlight, you in a dinner jacket, me in taffeta …

HAMILTON: That’s the only improvement I’ve heard so far.

GRACE: But you check the bushes to make sure none of your gay classmates see you.

SCOUT: And you still say you’re throwing caution to the wind while you do that.

WILL: And you still flee in horror after you kiss her.

HAMILTON: Uh … why?

JAKE: I offer to have a sex change operation for you.

HAMILTON (grimacing): Ewww …

BELLA: And then you realize how screwed up she is.

GRACE: And how desperately she needs you.

BELLA: And how much you need for her to feel totally loved just the way she is.

GRACE: So by morning, you’ve worked up the courage to commit to her.

BELLA: And that’s when you first cross-dress – to get into the girl’s school in time to stop her from leaving.

GRACE: It’s so romantic!

HAMILTON: It’s nauseating.

WILL: There’s an upside. Since girls can cox boys’ crew, Jackie will still be our cox … in a halter and shorts, with long hair …

HAMILTON: OK, a second improvement. … And Lena?

BELLA: Sean’s consolation prize. She likes Jackie. But she sees you and Jacqueline falling in love, it occurs her that gender might matter less than character, and when Jackie tells her what a sweetheart Sean’s been …

HAMILTON: That part I could live with. … So at the cotillion, who helps me find the guts to go for Jacqueline?

GRACE: The guy who’s hot for you – Harry Johnson.

HAMILTON: Mark?

BELLA: Uh – huh. Tell us it’s not in character.

HAMILTON: For Mark, it’s totally in character. But you want me to hurt him?

GRACE: Jackie hurt Lena for you, Ham. Wouldn’t you…

HAMILTON: No! We are so not doing this.

WILL: Don’t you want to hear why Jacqueline has to leave Rawley?

HAMILTON: To escape from your remake, I hope.

SCOUT: Jake with long hair … in bikinis …

HAMILTON: I’ll deal with the denims. I don’t really care how she looks – that’s the point, remember?

WILL: Ham, if you just give it a chance …

HAMILTON:  Krudski, it’s totally perverse. Nobody between Provincetown and the East Village would watch it. And even they’d hate it. And I am not hurting Mark!

WILL: We could tinker with the script. Constructive criticism’s always welcome.

HAMILTON: Shred the script. … (Turning toward the laptop:) So what if there’s no score?

SCOUT: Ham, we all score. It’s 2014. Gay fifteen-year-old virgins are passé.

WILL: We establish that right at the start, as you, through your telephoto lens, seek relief from the boredom of welcoming girls to the girls’ school …

JAKE: “Hello, Rawley Academy for Boys!” - It's an "action shot."

HAMILTON: Ughhh … I mean in the game. If it comes to penalty kicks, who do you think will win?

GRACE: Ooooo, you know how ties are broken.

HAMILTON: They’re not allowed to use their hands – so they toss a coin with their feet.

GRACE: Yeh, it does sorta suck.

HAMILTON: Gotta end it somehow, though.  Can’t run 'em till they drop – and they’re already feeling the pain. More missed passes, ball going out of bounds more often … and they’re slowing.

BELLA: You’ve been paying attention?

HAMILTON: The contrast between the first half and this is pretty stark.

GRACE: If it comes down to penalty kicks, Germany has it in the bag. Nothing gets by their goalie.

HAMILTON: But Neuer’s aggressive. He likes to charge out of the box, disrupt a shot. He can’t do that against penalty kicks.

RYDER (eyes still closed): He’s versatile. But you’re right. Penalty kicks aren’t his strong point.

HAMILTON: Then if I were an Argentine, I’d be praying it does go to penalty kicks.

WILL: Why?

HAMILTON: I don’t think Argentina’s gonna win unless it does.

RYDER (opening his eyes, craning his neck to see the match): Really?

HAMILTON: They’re not threatening to score so often as they were first half. The Germans seem to be holding up better. I don’t think it’s more stamina – just better pacing, planning for extra time. It’s interesting …

SCOUT: It’s a ball sport.

HAMILTON: Come on, those guys are running their hearts out.

WILL: They’re addicted to endorphins.

HAMILTON: They know that back home, this means a lot to everybody.

JAKE: Love?

HAMILTON: Well … kinda.

(SCOUT, WILL, RYDER, BELLA and GRACE crack up laughing.)

HAMILTON (again stopping): What? It is.

BELLA: Of course it is.

HAMILTON: Then what’s so funny? My analysis sucked?

RYDER (still watching the match): No, it’s spot on.

JAKE: So good that we’re all gonna celebrate.

HAMILTON: Celebrate?

WILL: Tonight.

SCOUT: Finn’s suite …

RYDER: With all the Dom Perignon we can drink.

WILL: And Mark will pick up the tab.

SCOUT: ‘Cause he just lost a wager.

HAMILTON: Mark made a bet?

GRACE: Uh – huh.

HAMILTON: With whom?

BELLA: Forrest.

HAMILTON: About what?

JAKE: You, Hammy.

HAMILTON: That I know nothing about soccer?

RYDER: That you would never admit to enjoying this match.  “Hamilton will watch anything,” Mark said. “Even fake wrestling …”

HAMILTON (wincing): He’s never gonna let me live that down, is he?

SCOUT: Hurting Jacqueline? Not a chance.

RYDER: “But,” Mark added, “Ham’s a total prima donna – hates being upstaged. If it were the Henley Regatta that the whole world was watching, he’d pretend not to like it.”

HAMILTON: Ewww … 

BELLA: He so has your number.

RYDER: Doesn’t he?

WILL: So to prove him wrong, we had to be … creative.

HAMILTON: You made up your remake to drive me to seek solace in ball-kicking?

GRACE: Who said all the cute ones are dumb?

HAMILTON: At least you weren’t serious. I thought you’d totally lost it, Krudski.

WILL: I can’t really claim credit for the specifics.

HAMILTON: Who can?

SCOUT: Ryder, mostly.

HAMILTON: I should have known.

RYDER: Nice that my creative talents are appreciated. But credit for the part that won me my wager – suggesting that you hurt Mark – goes entirely to Jacqueline.

HAMILTON (to JAKE): Traitor.

JAKE: Mark’ll be totally flattered. We’ll have a great night.

HAMILTON: At my expense.

JAKE: That’s what prima donnas are for, Hammy – to entertain.

HAMILTON: Great.

JAKE: Hamilton, we’ll have a whole, uninterrupted night with our crew. Think you can deal?

HAMILTON (after a pause): Sorry. … Thanks – to all of you – for setting this up.

BELLA: You’ll thank us tonight, boy. But the ones you should really be thanking … (Nodding toward the laptop): … are twenty-two exhausted ball-kickers.

HAMILTON: Yeh, being upstaged has its upside.

JAKE: You’re getting it.

HAMILTON (again resuming his massaging of RYDER through JAKE): But Ryder – for cooking up that gay version of Rawley, you have gotta pay.

RYDER (purring): What do you have in mind?

HAMILTON (shrugging): Taking care of me for another year sometime?

RYDER: Any year that the other chaps will let me, lover.

SCOUT: Take a number.

RYDER: Ladies, how about letting me roll over and watch what’s left of the match?

GRACE: You like football more than us?

RYDER: I’d rather not go where you three are sending me till I can take one of you with me.

JAKE: Mmmm … a monument of masculinity.

RYDER: And I’m dangerously close to soiling the Queen’s colours.

BELLA: Disrespectful?

RYDER: Very.

JAKE: We could lower them to half-mast …

HAMILTON: In mourning for your stillborn dream of an all-gay Rawley.

RYDER: I’d rather help the guy I’ve taken care of this year hold the girl I’ve taken care of him for.

BELLA (lifting her head off RYDER’s arm): Go.

(As RYDER moves his arms out from under BELLA’s and GRACE’s heads, SCOUT and WILL shift away from RYDER to make room for HAMILTON and JAKE to lie down. RYDER shifts toward BELLA and turns onto his side to slide JAKE down onto the towel. HAMILTON lies down on his side, facing JAKE, between her and GRACE, who spoons in behind him, SCOUT pulling in after her.)

RYDER (nuzzling JAKE’s hair): Welcome home, Jacqueline. (He feeds her a grape.)

JAKE (rolling it in her mouth, sighing): Nobody ever feeds me in the “Nice bike!” scene. Nobody hugs me and talks with me. Nobody helps me unpack. Nobody finds me a guy to shower with.

HAMILTON: I wonder why.

GRACE (caressing his chest): Biker boys with attitude need love too, Ham.

HAMILTON: Give me a break. … The German midfielder on the left side – he wasn’t there first half, was he?

SCOUT: No, he was substituted – during your shower.

RYDER: Schürrle – plays for Chelsea.

HAMILTON: What happened to the guy who started?

BELLA (cutting a slice of cheese): Took an Argentine shoulder in the face.

SCOUT: I still can’t believe Garay didn’t get a yellow card for that.

GRACE: Or that they let Kramer keep playing for fifteen minutes.

BELLA (feeding WILL the cheese): He was so obviously concussed. (She spoons in behind RYDER.)

RYDER: No money in rule enforcement.

SCOUT: There never is. That’s the problem.

JAKE: Hey, it beats blood on the sand.  

WILL (pulling in behind BELLA): Yeh, give us another couple thousand years and people might prefer rowing.

HAMILTON: Thanks for the long-term perspective. … That new guy …

RYDER: Schürrle.

HAMILTON: He’s really moving the ball – fast.  

RYDER: Yeh, and Götze’s …

WILL: Oh my god. A goal!

RYDER (softly): Brilliant!

SCOUT: Incredible. The way Götze pulled his chest back to take that pass …

GRACE: No penalty on this one?

RYDER: No, that was clean.

HAMILTON: How much time left?

SCOUT: About seven minutes.

HAMILTON: So that pretty much wraps it up?

RYDER: Seems likely.

HAMILTON: Shall we phone the gang at Sean’s?

WILL: Before this is over? McGrail would call us wimps all night.

SCOUT (laughing): You’re right. Anyone for another drink?

JAKE: Wouldn’t say no.

BELLA: I think none of us would.

SCOUT: One round of rum and Cokes, coming up. (He kisses GRACE’s shoulder, sits up, picks up the empty bottles within reach, and slides back toward the cooler.)

GRACE: Ham, my robe, please?

HAMILTON (sliding back to get her beach robe): Sure … but nobody’s watching.

GRACE (holding her arms up behind her back): It’s Massachusetts, not St. Martin.

HAMILTON (sliding the robe up her arms): This is so moving in the wrong direction.

GRACE: What you do by day you can undo by night …

HAMILTON: Grrrrr …

GRACE (sitting up): Like Penelope.

HAMILTON: There’s something wrong with that metaphor.

GRACE: The gender. It’s what we do, boy. … (She kisses HAMILTON’s cheek. Tying her robe:) Wanna pass me those empties, big sister?

BELLA: Thanks.

(BELLA passes the three empty Coke bottles on her side of the group to GRACE. She slides back to hand them to SCOUT, who has already taken six new Cokes out of the cooler.)

WILL: Argentina’s not giving up, are they?

GRACE (softly, looking across the lake, touching SCOUT’s hand): Scout, look.

SCOUT (putting the three empties into the cooler): Where?

GRACE: The town picnic area.  In the trees, left of the dock.

SCOUT: Oh no … Guys, heads up! We’ve got company.

WILL (intent on the match): The more the merrier.

GRACE: A new arrival.

WILL (sitting up): Where?

SCOUT: Across the lake … see her?

HAMILTON (also sitting up): Yeh. … Grace, my camera.

(GRACE hands him his camera.)

HAMILTON (zooming in, softly): Nice hair!

BELLA: Fleming!

HAMILTON: It is. … Flaming auburn – like Lena’s …

RYDER (quickly standing): Bloody hell …

HAMILTON: It’s not her – could be her sister, though.

SCOUT: New?

HAMILTON: Not Rawley, not Edmund. After fourteen years …

JAKE: Yeh, we know them all. … What’s she doing?

HAMILTON: Sitting at a picnic table, staring at the school …

WILL: The usual deer-in-the-headlights look?

HAMILTON: Yeh.

BELLA: What she’s wearing – it’s a beach robe, right?

HAMILTON: Yeh.

RYDER: Under it?

HAMILTON: Definitely not a binder.

JAKE: Thank god. Those are _soooo_ embarrassing.

GRACE: Aw …

JAKE (to GRACE): You had a good reason.

SCOUT (to HAMILTON): The robe pocket?

HAMILTON: Can’t see it. … Wait, she’s standing up. … Oh god …

WILL: The Rawley crest?

HAMILTON (lowering his camera): Yeh. … (Handing the camera back to GRACE:) You were right. … (Sighing:) I welcome newcomers. … (Standing:) I’ll get her.

RYDER: I’ll meet her. You bring the canoe. (He dives into the lake, starts swimming across.)

(HAMILTON looks at JAKE.)

JAKE: Go.

(HAMILTON nods, climbs into the canoe.)

WILL (unhitching the mooring rope): Don’t worry about the game.  We’ll tell you what you’ve missed.

HAMILTON (seating himself I the stern): Droll.

JAKE (softly): Just be yourself, boy.

(HAMILTON picking up a paddle, smiles feebly, pushes off from the dock, then starts to turn the canoe.)

Hamilton Fleming (Ian Somerhalder)   
_Young Americans_ promotional photo, 2000.

*         *          *


	3. Scene 3 - Cloudy over the rainbow

EXT – BOATHOUSE DOCK, RAWLEY ACADEMY FOR BOYS.  DAY.

 

(The shadows are not noticeably longer. The football match still plays on the laptop. SCOUT, WILL, BELLA, GRACE and JAKE sit in front of it – all three girls now in their beach robes – watching the canoe return from the town picnic area dock, HAMILTON paddling, an auburn-haired girl in a Rawley beach robe seated in bow facing forward, RYDER kneeling behind her and enfolding her in his arms.

SCOUT, WILL, GRACE and JAKE are nursing what looks like Cokes in glass bottles.  BELLA fiddles with a mobile phone, a Coke bottle beside her.  Three more Coke bottles stand opened near the cooler.)

SCOUT: She does look like Lena.

BELLA (turning off the phone): And Forrest seems to have noticed.

WILL: D’you get her?

BELLA (nodding): She’ll e-mail him, cc all of us.

WILL: Old.

BELLA: Everything old becomes hip.

(BELLA hands the phone to WILL, then picks up her Coke as WILL puts the phone back into a topsider.)

SCOUT: Remember when they always used to pop up at the boys’ school?

GRACE: Yeh. And now, more and more often … over there, in town.

WILL (shrugging): It’s all about the big picture: time – it’s not really on their side.

BELLA: Not funny.

SCOUT: So, are we ready to do this?

GRACE: Ready as we’ll ever be.

(They set their Cokes down near the laptop. WILL, BELLA, GRACE and JAKE stand.  SCOUT kneels by the dock cleat; as the canoe nears the dock, he grabs its mooring rope and begins re-hitching it.)

HAMILTON: Guys, meet Cloudy.

RYDER: From Germany.

WILL (offering the GIRL his hand): _Willkommen an Rawley_.

GIRL (climbing onto the dock): _Danke_ … blue-collar scholar.

RYDER (following her onto the dock): Her English is better than yours, William.

HAMILTON (climbing onto the dock): Yeh, where’d that happen?

GIRL: Cardiff.

RYDER: You found an English expat?

GIRL (slipping out of her sandals): Lotsa laughs.

SCOUT (standing): Introductions?

GIRL: To characters in my own dream? Hardly necessary, Scout … except – Grace?

GRACE: In the flesh.

GIRL: Prettier flesh.

GRACE: Have you seen yourself yet?

GIRL: Isn’t there some rule against mirrors in dreams?

WILL: Not in this dream. They’re useful for symbolism.

GIRL (rolling her eyes): I’m more into the eye candy.

RYDER: Then you really should look at yourself. Use the lake.

GIRL (going to the edge of the dock, bending over): _Unglaublich!_ I look like … seventeen again. But I never looked this good at seventeen.

BELLA: The Rawley diet. Lose all your extra kilos while scarfing all the triple-scoop sundaes you want.

JAKE: And all it costs is a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.

GIRL: Right.

RYDER: What, you don’t have one? … Back in the canoe!

GIRL (laughing): Aren’t you supposed to be a rotter?

RYDER: Can’t believe it myself, sometimes.

GIRL: How’d it happen?

RYDER (looking at JAKE): I heard a story – about true love.  And I wanted in.

GIRL: Are you?

RYDER: I am.

GIRL: With?

SCOUT: Lena.

GIRL: A great girl. Congratulations.

RYDER: Thanks.

GIRL (to WILL): And she got way too little air time.

WILL (shrugging): Fairy godmothers don’t stick around after the ball.

GIRL (rolling her eyes at WILLL, muttering): _Einige Tassen aus dem Schrank_ … (To RYDER:) So where is she?

RYDER: In L.A. She doesn’t come here till episode three.

GIRL: Neither do you.

RYDER: Long story. _…_ Would you like a drink?

GIRL (looking at the cooler): Coke?

BELLA: You were expecting?

GIRL: Coke.

RYDER: There’s rum in it.

GIRL: Exceeds expectations.

SCOUT (reaching down for a Coke): We try. Watch the end of the match with us?

GIRL: Thought you’d never ask. … (Sitting down:) Wi-fi? From the boathouse?

SCOUT (handing her a Coke): Yep.

GIRL: _That_ exceeds expectations.

WILL (also sitting down): Scout’s tips from the diner.

GIRL (smiling at Scout): Still a prince.

SCOUT (blushing slightly): Watch the game.

(HAMILTON, RYDER, BELLA, GRACE and JAKE grab Cokes and sit down.)

GIRL: So did Götze really score?

GRACE: Uh, yeh – weren’t you watching?

GIRL: I was, but … it’s the last thing I remember – before I came here. I thought maybe …

SCOUT: It happened. And Argentina hasn’t scored, and there’s only about two minutes left.  So … Ewww! That was nasty!

GIRL: _Unbedingt!_ Schweinsteiger’s bleeding! So where’s the yellow card?

RYDER: FIFA seems to have a yellow card shortage.

SCOUT: He’ll be OK – just needs a bandage.

BELLA: Yeh, compared to what happened to Kramer, this is nothing.

GIRL: No joke.

WILL: So – “Cloudy”?

GIRL: Ryder talked me out of "Foggy" - which is how I was feeling when I got here. But names here are supposed to be descriptive, aren't they - like a guy overcoming his cruddiness by willpower?

WILL: Well, yeh, but …

GIRL: You'd prefer "Cloudski"? Or maybe "Fogski"?

WILL: Funny.

GIRL: I couldn’t think of anything as good as “Jake Pratt.” But if you’ve got more ironic double puns up your sleeve …

WILL: I don’t. That was my best shot.

JAKE: Oh look … the ref’s looking at his watch.  It must be time to change the subject.

WILL: Could we talk you into “Claudia”?

GIRL: It’s lame.

SCOUT: Ooooo … She puns in Latin, like the night  
                                Of cloudless climes and starry skies.

RYDER: And all that's best of dark and bright  
             Meets in her aspect and her eyes.

GIRL: You’d prefer “Claudia”?

RYDER: Frankly, yes.

SCOUT: It’s a guy thing.

GIRL: Sure, whatever.

HAMILTON: Thanks.

(On the screen, the referee calls time.)

HAMILTON: Well, that’s the ball game. And it was so short.

CLAUDIA: Do I detect a hint of sarcasm?

SCOUT: Yeh, and it’s kinda odd, coming from a guy who spent most of the match showering with his girl.

CLAUDIA: Really?

RYDER: A different way of welcoming Jake back to Rawley.

WILL: Instead of the same-old-same-old “Nice bike!” scene.

GRACE: ‘Cause today’s our fourteenth anniversary.

HAMILTON: But nobody was watching.

CLAUDIA: Uh … today’s July thirteenth. Wasn’t your anniversary, like, yesterday, the twelfth?

SCOUT: Prep school terms always start on Sundays.

WILL: ‘Cause classes start on Monday.

BELLA: So our anniversary’s always a Sunday.

CLAUDIA: Got it. … (To WILL): A shower scene to welcome her back – ironic.

WILL: Thank you.

CLAUDIA: You’re hopeless. … Good dialogue?

RYDER: Dialogue in Fleming’s shower scenes got lost with his virginity.

SCOUT: Unless you count “OH MY GOD … JAKE? ” – shouted loud enough for us to hear it out here on the dock.

CLAUDIA (looking at JAKE): Awww … You surprised him? That’s so sweet …

JAKE: I screwed his brains out.

CLAUDIA (laughing): So where is everybody? It’s a gorgeous day, you’ve got wi-fi …

SCOUT: They’re at the girl’s school.

HAMILTON: They were. Given that the match lasted two hours, they’re probably on their way to dinner. Speaking of which …

JAKE (passing HAMILTON the grapes): Here. Bread and cheese will follow. (She sets to work cutting them.)

HAMILTON: Thanks.

CLAUDIA: You’ve been tamed, girl.

JAKE (shrugging): It happens.

CLAUDIA: So what was happening at the girls’ school?

BELLA (popping a grape into HAMILTON’s mouth): Wide-screen TV.

CLAUDIA (wrinkling her nose): At Rawley?

HAMILTON (mouth full): It’s 2014. … (After swallowing:) You want guys to come to the last all-boys’ school in Massachusetts, you’ve gotta make a few concessions.

CLAUDIA: It’s still not co-ed?

SCOUT: Not for summer session.

CLAUDIA: That’s weird.

GRACE: A lot of things here are. Hasn’t stopped us yet.

CLAUDIA: So is Sean around?

WILL: Watching the game at his house.

BELLA: With his girl and two other guy friends of ours and their girls. 

HAMILTON: We should phone them.

JAKE (handing HAMILTON a cheese sandwich): We already did – while you were canoeing.

HAMILTON: Thanks. …

JAKE (to CLAUDIA): Hungry?

CLAUDIA: No, thanks. … Watching Andrea Merkel hug the whole team is kinda turning my stomach.

RYDER: You’re not alone.

JAKE: Yeh. … Mind if I check my e-mail?

SCOUT: Go for it.

JAKE (shifting to the laptop): Thanks. (She turns off the German team’s post-match celebration and starts to type.)

CLAUDIA (to BELLA): So you’re not with Sean?

BELLA (wrapping an arm around WILL): Not for about thirteen years and ten months.

CLAUDIA: You finally woke up? Like, that evening in the cabin, when you were lying with your head on Will’s lap, and only Scout and Sean barging in …

BELLA: Yeh, Ham and Jackie can be … kinda contagious.

CLAUDIA: Best wishes. … But you were _soooo_ slow. It was _soooo_ obvious. I mean, all summer long ...

BELLA: Spare me the lecture. I know how dumb I was. For fourteen years I’ve relived it every summer, and every time anyone watches it.

CLAUDIA: You’re kidding. Every time anyone watches, you all … ?

SCOUT: Have to stop whatever we’re doing and re-enact it, yeh.

CLAUDIA: Bummer.

JAKE: It’s not that bad. When we come back, it’s still the same time it was when we left.

CLAUDIA: How …?

WILL: Time doesn’t matter much here.

GRACE: But when we come back, we feel …

JAKE: Creepy.

GRACE: I feel like a skank.

RYDER: I feel like an ass-bite.

JAKE: I feel so unlovable that I need a straight guy to fall for me thinking I’m a boy.

WILL: I feel like I’m faking it.

BELLA: I feel so traumatized by having lost my mom that I’d rather lose a perfect lover than risk losing a gas station.

SCOUT: I feel angsty – endlessly angsty.

HAMILTON: And I still feel scared to death of kissing a guy.

CLAUDIA: You’re not?

(RYDER leans in and kisses HAMILTON, who reciprocates affectionately.)

RYDER (breaking off): Any more questions?

CLAUDIA: Uh, no.

JAKE: So if we’re like, together … being watched can really put a damper on things.

BELLA: That’s why today’s kinda special for us.

WILL: Thanks to the World Cup final, no one’s watched us.

GRACE: And no one will, till they’ve all drunk themselves blind and screwed each other silly.

CLAUDIA: Oh … so I’m kinda interrupting something.

JAKE (opening an e-mail program): Not at all. Join us.

CLAUDIA: Join you.

JAKE (opening an e-mail): Uh – huh.

CLAUDIA: You and Hamilton.

JAKE (turning back toward CLAUDIA): All of us. Our friends at Sean’s house, Hammy and me …

BELLA: Will and me …

GRACE (wrapping an arm around SCOUT): And Scout and me.

CLAUDIA: That I’ve gotta hear about. … (Smiling at SCOUT:) A good match. Best wishes.

SCOUT: Thanks. We’ll talk.

CLAUDIA: But, uh … all of you – together?

JAKE: We’ve been like, sixteen, for fourteen years. And we really, really like each other. Do the math.

BELLA: And we’re couples who’ve stayed together all that time. ‘Cause we help each other do that.

GRACE: It’s the “true love” thing – it spreads, it grows.

CLAUDIA: So the separate story lines have, uh … intersected?

HAMILTON: You could say that.

WILL: And it’s affectionate. We don’t bite.

CLAUDIA: But you don’t know me.

SCOUT: We know you love us.

WILL: Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.

HAMILTON: What more do we need to know?

CLAUDIA: Uh, that unlike all of you – I’m single?

RYDER: Obviously. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have come here alone.

CLAUDIA: That makes no sense.

JAKE: It will. But here, being single’s … temporary.

BELLA: And we help each other through it.

GRACE: Like Hamilton. Fourteen years ago, after Jacqueline left Rawley, she enrolled as a girl in another school, close enough for Ham to visit her on weekends …

CLAUDIA: Finn ratted her out?

RYDER: Hamilton did the right thing. He gave her up most of the time, so she could be herself.

WILL: "Like Bogie in Casablanca."

CLAUDIA (to HAMILTON): Well done, boy.

SCOUT: But Ham had a plan to bring her back to Rawley after a year. 

GRACE: To pull it off, he had to keep on pretending that Jake was a boy, and that he was gay, until people here were ready to forgive them.

WILL: And it worked.  Jacqueline was allowed to transfer back – to Rawley Girls’.

HAMILTON: Because Jake and I got help – like, from every person on this dock, or in Sean’s rec room.

JAKE: Not to mention Finn and our parents.

WILL: But Jacqueline couldn’t bear to leave Ham alone during the weeks while she was gone.

BELLA: So she got someone else to stand in for her.

CLAUDIA: You?

BELLA (smiling): Only once. After that …

WILL: One of our minor characters, who’d gone a bit off-script during summer session.

CLAUDIA: Who?

HAMILTON: Mark Johnson.

CLAUDIA: A guy? … (To JAKE:) What, you’re as hooked on irony as Krudski?

JAKE (shrugging): It’s contagious.

CLAUDIA: But I don’t remember a Mark Johnson.

RYDER: The first guy I harass in my video camera scene, when he calls himself “Harry.” “Mark Johnson” in our hopelessly botched credits, where they can’t seem to decide whether what my name is, either.

CLAUDIA: Harry Johnson? The scrawny geek?

BELLA: Careful, girl. We’re fond of him. And he’s not scrawny anymore.

SCOUT: He rows with us. And by the way, it’s Forrest Gregor Ryder. 

RYDER: But only my mum gets to call me “Gregor.”

CLAUDIA (to RYDER): “Forrest”?

RYDER: Unless I’m being an ass-bite.

CLAUDIA (smiling): Forrest. … (To JAKE:) So how’d you get your hopeless homophobe to bed a guy?

HAMILTON: Beautifully. Let Mark and me tell you tonight.

SCOUT: Anyhow, when our next summer session started, Jacqueline did come back here.

HAMILTON: But not quite the way I’d planned.

RYDER: She drove up to the boy’s school, on her bike, in drag – again.

WILL: She’d figured out what Rawley is … what Hamilton is … why he’s here … and what he needs.

BELLA: To be watched – to try to love and save everyone by loving and saving Jacqueline.

SCOUT: So she came back here – to do it all again.

CLAUDIA: You gave up happily-ever-after … with Hamilton?

JAKE: Nobody watches happily-ever-after.

GRACE: And the whole school, the whole town, was kinda blown away …

SCOUT: And we all wanted to do it over with her …

BELLA: ‘Cause she couldn’t do it alone.

RYDER: So we have.

GRACE: Every summer we just … relive that summer we’ll never forget.

SCOUT: ‘Cause every autumn Jacqueline leaves, and every summer she comes back.

WILL: Like Persephone.

CLAUDIA (rolling her eyes at WILL): Please … So you all keep doing the same thing … over and over … forever?

SCOUT: Only during the summers. And while people are watching.

WILL: The rest of the year … it’s different.

HAMILTON: We’ve added some advanced courses … correspondence courses … shuttle buses to Cambridge and Boston …

WILL: We all have master’s degrees. Most of us are working on Ph.D.’s.  Scout’s finished law school.

SCOUT: Jacqueline’s current winter school is Yale – doctoral program in drama.

HAMILTON: And Rawley kinda runs itself now. My dad’s working on his third book.

BELLA: Same at Edmund. The town’s changed a bit, in some ways.

GRACE: ‘Cause in other ways, it hasn’t changed at all – like us.

CLAUDIA: Nobody grows older?

RYDER: Not past whatever age they look and feel best at – or were fourteen years ago ...

GRACE: And it’s all worked out great, except for one little problem.

BELLA: After the third year … the rest of us started to get a little jealous of Mark and Anne.

CLAUDIA: Anne?

JAKE: My roommate at my first winter school.

GRACE: Jacqueline set Mark up with her.  And they were always a little closer to Jacqueline and Ham than any other couple.

SCOUT: Which didn’t seem quite fair.

RYDER: Mark _is_ only a minor character.

WILL: And he only got close to Jacqueline and Ham by going off-script.

BELLA: So now our guys rotate taking care of Hamilton every year.

WILL: Helping him think about her weekday nights …

SCOUT: Coxing our boat by day.

CLAUDIA: Uh … aren’t you guys a little heavy to cox?

JAKE: Kinda fair. After a decade’s practice, you don’t lose many Junior Division rowing races.

RYDER: And our girls rotate rooming with Jacqueline at her winter school.

GRACE: And rowing stroke on the girl’s crew boat she coxes.

HAMILTON: And that lets Anne come here, which she and Mark kinda like.

CLAUDIA: Ah ... Not really jealousy?

RYDER: Jealousy. The kindness is just a fun by-product.

CLAUDIA: Right.

BELLA: This was Forrest’s and Lena’s year. That’s why he’s here now.

GRACE: Most years, he hangs out with Lena in L.A. until episode three.

JAKE: And Hammy and I will take care of Forrest till she’s here.

CLAUDIA: Sweet.

HAMILTON: “Never be lonely. Never be misunderstood. Never be frightened.”

WILL: Life _can_ be perfect. You just have to be … “little.”

CLAUDIA: More irony?

JAKE: It’s what we do. … By the way, Forrest, you have e-mail.

RYDER: I do?

JAKE: Uh – huh.  From Lena … cc all of us.

RYDER (after a pause): You didn’t.

JAKE: Need to read it?

RYDER: No. …

JAKE (to CLAUDIA): But you should.

CLAUDIA: Uh … Why?

JAKE (holding the laptop up to CLAUDIA): It’s an e-mail we’ve been forwarding to each other for almost fourteen years – ever since I first sent it to Ham, cc Bella, at the drive-in.

CLAUDIA: Whatever. … (Reading:) “Kiss her, stupid.”

RYDER (nuzzling her): May I?

CLAUDIA: I thought Ham and Jacqueline were going to take care of you.

JAKE (closing the laptop): We are.

GRACE: We all are.

HAMILTON (also nuzzling): Help us?

CLAUDIA (to RYDER): If you’ll tell me about you and Lena – and let me help you think about her.

RYDER (caressing CLAUDIA’s face): Perfect. (He gently kisses her forehead, pulling in JAKE and HAMILTON.)

CLAUDIA (purring): Don’t stop hugging me first.

RYDER (pulling her onto his lap): Come here.

CLAUDIA: Mmmm … but I’m a little unclear … about a lot of things.

SCOUT: So ask.

CLAUDIA: Well, first of all … if you all have to relive that summer whenever anyone watches, why do you also re-enact it in real time?

SCOUT: ‘Cause there’s a difference between actually being fifteen again …

GRACE: Like we are when people watch us …

SCOUT: And trying to remember what it was like to be fifteen …

BELLA: Experiencing the past from the present, seeing new things in it every time we relive it …

HAMILTON: Being young and old at once.

JAKE: A huge difference.

WILL: “It’s not always about the big picture. It’s really all about the moments.”

RYDER: And how we string them together …

CLAUDIA: To make life more meaningful?

RYDER (nuzzling): Exactly.

SCOUT: Every time we do it, we see things in it we never saw before.

GRACE: And there are some viewers who like to do that with us.

HAMILTON: Except during World Cup finals.

RYDER: He’s a little miffed.

GRACE: Doesn’t like being upstaged.

JAKE (nuzzling CLAUDIA’s shoulder): Help us make it up to him?

CLAUDIA: Just don’t let me wake up.

JAKE: Yeh, about that …

WILL: Some people do come here while they’re asleep.  But you didn’t.

SCOUT: You said the last thing you remember is Götze scoring that goal?

CLAUDIA: And me jumping up and squeeing.

RYDER: “Squeeing”? … Cardiff-speak?

BELLA: Girl speak.

GRACE: Fan-girl speak, more specifically.

JAKE: And you don’t wanna know.

RYDER: Right.

WILL: You probably passed out …

CLAUDIA: Ya think?

GRACE: And hit your head.

BELLA: ‘Cause if you’d just fainted, you’ve have woken up before we noticed you were here.

CLAUDIA: Oh …

RYDER: Where were you?

CLAUDIA: In a friend’s living room.

SCOUT: Hard floor?

CLAUDIA: No, but … a table.

HAMILTON: Alone?

CLAUDIA: With friends.

SCOUT: In good health?

CLAUDIA: Great, I think – although I had drunk a little … and smoked a little … and I hadn’t really slept enough for, like, weeks, ‘cause Germany kept winning, so we all, uh …

GRACE: Just kept partying? Been there, done that. … So, uh, if I may … how old are you?

CLAUDIA: Younger than you’d be, Grace – if you still aged.

JAKE: Then you’ll probably wake up.

CLAUDIA: Some people don’t?

HAMILTON: The school’s grown a bit.

CLAUDIA (after a pause): We can do that?

SCOUT: Only if you want to.

RYDER: Or you can think of us as “an undigested bit of beef.”

WILL: Like, if you’re really here for the symbolism …

CLAUDIA: Funny.  I’m here ‘cause you guys are hot. And this place is beautiful. And Ham and Jake are so funny, and so …

BELLA: Yes?

CLAUDIA: Lovable.

SCOUT: Bell-bottoms to straight-legs and back lovable?

CLAUDIA: No …

BELLA: Civilization lovable?

CLAUDIA: Alright, I get it. I was told, repeatedly.  Blatantly, even – like, “heaven under our feet …”

WILL: And “I’ve been coming here forever.”

CLAUDIA: That’s past tense.

WILL: Tense doesn’t matter much here.

CLAUDIA: Except when you switch tense, at the end, to tell people …

WILL: That time doesn’t much matter here?

CLAUDIA: Yeh. … So even if I do wake up … I can come back – and stay?

JAKE: The show ends the way it ends for a reason, girl.

GRACE: Like, with you reading the Dean’s you-can-come-back note … looking into a mirror.

RYDER: “Speaks like silence,” doesn’t it?

CLAUDIA: Don’t you start too!

RYDER (nuzzling): I think you’re here for the same reason I am. … When you heard the story, you felt kissed … and changed … and you wanted in.

CLAUDIA: Yeh …

GRACE: Same reason Scout and I are here, girl.

BELLA: And Will and I.

CLAUDIA (to WILL): But you dreamed it.

WILL: Dreams come from someplace. And when I first came here, Ham was here already, perched over the door, waiting.

HAMILTON: But you’re not here for me.

(CLAUDIA looks at RYDER.)

RYDER: Or for me.

SCOUT: You’re here for what this school teaches.

CLAUDIA: True love?

JAKE: It’ll happen.

BELLA: Always does.

SCOUT: No single kids left here – except for a few newcomers.

GRACE: Or in town.

WILL: Not even any single teachers.

CLAUDIA: Uh, Finn?

HAMILTON: We’ll tell you tonight. Speaking of which, the sun’s getting kinda low …

GRACE: And four guys with teenage hormones are getting kinda impatient to welcome Jacqueline and you …

CLAUDIA: Uh, yeh … I’ve noticed.

RYDER: And to tell you a love story.

CLAUDIA: Just one? I mean, just for starters … Scout and Will on St. Martin? Bella’s gas station? Ham and Jake in New York? Will and Bella? You and Lena? Scout and Grace? Finn and whoever? … And, uh, Hamilton and Mark?

WILL: It’s all one story.  It’s just … grown.

SCOUT: Which is kinda why we’re all here ... together.

CLAUDIA: But it’d take half the night to tell me all that. When what you should be doing, and want to do, is to welcome Jacqueline back here.

JAKE: Claudia, I come back to help Hamilton bring people here. Welcoming someone here is the best welcome-back I can have.

CLAUDIA: But I’d be a total drag on your party.

JAKE: You won’t. You like Hamilton and me?

CLAUDIA: That’s why people come here, isn’t it?

JAKE: Hamilton and I feel that way about a lot of couples here. And if you join us, you’ll feel that way about seven of them before the night’s out.

HAMILTON: And helping that happen by telling you how well they’ve loved each other, and us, and other couples we love, is our idea of a perfect night.

CLAUDIA: Jacqueline … seven other guys like Hamilton?

JAKE: He inspires imitation.

HAMILTON: We inspire one another.

CLAUDIA (to BELLA): Eight guys … all as loving as Ham?

JAKE: Eight rowers … with seventeen-year-olds’ bodies and hormones and thirty-year-olds’ experience.

BELLA: Including thirteen years’ experience of cooperating to give their girls their best.

GRACE: And all more than a little in love with each other, and each other’s girls …

BELLA: But totally supportive of each other’s couple-relationships.

SCOUT: Because that’s what it’s about - couples, supporting one another as couples. Each couple tries to help the other couples love each other and grow together …

WILL: To make being together as a couple even better for them in every way we can, in ways that sex just …

CLAUDIA: Symbolizes?

HAMILTON: Focuses. 

SCOUT: But there's no pressure.

WILL: We've got all the time in the world.

HAMILTON: Jake and I'd like to tell you how well our friends have loved us, and each other.

JAKE: And to show you a little of what we feel for them.

BELLA: After that, it'll get a little wild. 'Cause it's Jacqueline first night back here.

RYDER: But you and I don't have to stay for that.

CLAUDIA: Keep you from the party?

RYDER: If this weren't my year with Ham, I'd be in L.A. anyhow. And if you'd just like me for a pillow, we can do that.

JAKE: Although that'd be a tragic waste of a great tongue.

GRACE: Or if you'd like, seven guys would be happy to welcome you by giving you their best.

HAMILTON: Or anything in between. 

CLAUDIA: Uh … seven guys - not eight?

RYDER: Lena's not here …

SCOUT: And there are some things we don't do when our partners aren't with us.

RYDER: Doesn't mean I'd be useless, though. Anything you do tonight, I'll be part of. 

WILL: Anything anyone does tonight, his or her partner will be part of.

BELLA: 'Cause it's about couples.

CLAUDIA: “The perfect people, the perfect life” … "this world where dreams really do come true.”

WILL: And tonight’s not typical. Usually it’s way fewer than eight couples, and it’s not wild at all.

JAKE: And it’s not how we usually welcome newcomers. Usually, it would be just Hamilton and me – or another couple, if I weren’t here.

CLAUDIA: Where will you all get together?

RYDER: Finn’s suite.

CLAUDIA: You’re kidding.

BELLA: It’s kind of a tradition.

CLAUDIA (nose wrinkling): With Finn and whoever he’s with?

JAKE (laughing): No.

WILL: Finn has another place on campus to stay. His wife’s the headmistress of our girl’s school.

CLAUDIA: And they let you …

GRACE: Claudia, I’m twenty-eight. The others are older.

CLAUDIA: Oh yeh …

HAMILTON: And every couple who'll be there has been together at least thirteen years.

CLAUDIA: Does Finn’s suite include a room that Forrest and I could retire to, if I feel … ?

SCOUT: Overwhelmed? … Yes, several.

RYDER: And my room adjoins.

CLAUDIA: Then I’d like to go. I’d like to meet Sean – and your other friends.  Who are they?

HAMILTON: Liz, Sean’s girlfriend – Mark’s twin sister.

GRACE: Kind of a girl version of Mark.

SCOUT: And definitely not scrawny.

BELLA: And Brandon – the guy who asked me to dance at the cotillion.

CLAUDIA: Nice.

JAKE: Very. He’s with Jenny, a friend of Will’s and Bella’s from town.

SCOUT: And Stewart and Brooke …

BELLA: Both preps. Liz’s roommate and her total sweetheart guy …

WILL: And Mark and Anne, although they’re not at Sean’s. They’re on a mission.

CLAUDIA: A mission?

BELLA: Uh – huh. But they’ll be back.

JAKE: The guys all row in my shell now – my crew.

HAMILTON: When nobody’s watching.

CLAUDIA: Sean goes to Rawley now?

JAKE: Only summers. … But in thirteen summers …

CLAUDIA: He’s become a preppy?

GRACE: Pretty much. Most of us townies have.  I’m a Rawley Academy day student.

CLAUDIA: But Rawley doesn’t have day students – just boarding students … (To HAMILTON:) Except for faculty brats.

SCOUT: Times have changed. We have a lot of day students now.

CLAUDIA: How?

WILL: Ham saw something … and turned it into money … and used the money to open a day program with low tuitions …

SCOUT: Free for town kids that need that.

BELLA (smiling at HAMILTON): And to turn the town middle school into a charter school run by Rawley, so that a lot of its kids can pass Rawley’s entrance exam.

WILL: And the rest … well, Rawley’s summer guest students are all townies now.

GRACE: Like Sean.

CLAUDIA (to HAMILTON): What’d you see? The next hot tech stock?

RYDER: Something in Shakespeare.

CLAUDIA (to HAMILTON): In Shakespeare? You? The clueless dork who made a Shakespearean actress’s cross-dressing daughter say, “I’m da man,” without ever thinking of Viola’s soliloquy in _Twelfth Night_?

HAMILTON (wincing): I had help. From all of us. Especially from … my inspiration. (He kisses JAKE.)

CLAUDIA (to WILL): So what did he see?

RYDER (nuzzling): We’ll tell you tonight.

CLAUDIA: That good?

WILL: Better. It’s like, what we’re modeled on. I just didn’t see it – until Ham showed me.

HAMILTON (breaking off, to WILL): You didn’t have to see it, you felt it – like Romeo. … (To CLAUDIA:) And with the town schools, I’ve had help … (Smiling, first at SCOUT, then at RYDER:) From generous friends.

RYDER: Easy to be generous when one has invested wisely.

SCOUT: And easy to invest wisely once we’d seen that this town would grow fast, and consist increasingly of grownups with teenage bodies and pleasures.

RYDER: At first it was hard to believe, but those of us closest to Jacqueline and Ham believed it first …

SCOUT: So we’ve made the most money.

CLAUDIA: Faith pays?

RYDER: The payoff’s the people. A whole town full of friends … (Smiling at GRACE:) And lovers.

CLAUDIA (to BELLA): So are you a day student, too?

BELLA: A boarding student. On a town scholarship. Like Will’s.

CLAUDIA: Since when?

BELLA: Thirteen and a half years ago.

CLAUDIA: Congratulations. You so totally deserve it. … (To SCOUT:) And that solved your problem.

SCOUT: It did. … That obvious?

CLAUDIA: Scout, you wanted to give Bella your world. She was way too bright, and kind, and beautiful to keep clinging to that gas station – and that drove you nuts.

SCOUT: I know. I’ve been re-living it for fourteen years.

CLAUDIA (to BELLA): So, your scholarship … (To RYDER): I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking – until tonight – how that happened?

RYDER (nuzzling CLAUDIA’s neck): You’re learning.

CLAUDIA: Alright, back to Sean.  So he goes to Rawley, and rows with you, in the summers?

JAKE: He also rows with us fall and spring terms.

SCOUT: Gave up baseball and football at Edmund to do it.

WILL: Although he still plays ice hockey for Edmund.

CLAUDIA: How did you get him to do that?

JAKE (rolling her eyes at CLAUDIA): How do you think?

CLAUDIA: Right. Moving on … Am I keeping you from dinner?

GRACE: Nah, we noshed through the game.

HAMILTON: Which lasted into our dinner hour.

RYDER: Our first-night dinner in hall will have been a bit bollocksed, I’m afraid.

JAKE: But Hammy and I should make a few brief appearances this evening …

HAMILTON: At the diner, then at the girls’ and boys’ schools’ common rooms.

JAKE: Come with us?

CLAUDIA: I’d love to, but … what shall I wear?

JAKE: I’ve got a playsuit in my backpack in the boathouse.

CLAUDIA: And you’ll wear?

JAKE: My denims.

CLAUDIA: Still a couple sizes too large?

JAKE: Uh, yeh.

CLAUDIA: Then I’ll wear them. I think Hamilton and a few hundred other guys might prefer you in the playsuit.

(HAMILTON and JAKE, WILL and BELLA, and SCOUT and GRACE exchange faint smiles.)

RYDER (nuzzling CLAUDIA): I love stripping kind girls out of drag.

CLAUDIA: Then try the one who gave up happily-ever-after with a love god – she’ll be here all summer. … (To WILL:) So shall we go?

WILL: Our friends at Sean’s will meet us at the diner. But they won’t be ready for a while. Sean’s mom’s cooking them dinner.

CLAUDIA: So what do you suggest we do until then?

HAMILTON: Hang out in the boathouse till the stars come out?

CLAUDIA (wrinkling her nose): The boathouse?

BELLA: Prep school boathouses are nice, girl.

CLAUDIA: Oh yeh – I’d forgotten. In episode three … (To RYDER:) … in your first scene with Will …

(RYDER grabs CLAUDIA’s head and kisses her intensely – but with eyes open and flaring in warning.)

HAMILTON: Uh, guy …

RYDER (breaking off): Sorry – got a bit carried away. Claudia’s a true fan. Knows about a cut scene …

WILL: In which Ryder, uh … invites me to the boathouse.

HAMILTON: No wonder it was cut!

JAKE: Really. Thank god for editors! Krudski, you were gonna have Ryder hit on you – in his first scene?

WILL (shrugging): The guy’s hot. And I hadn’t met Caroline yet. And Bella and Scout were too busy angsting … (To CLAUDIA:) You understand?

CLAUDIA (rolling her eyes first at WILL, then at RYDER): Yeh – clearly. … (To SCOUT:) So what’s inside the boathouse? All they ever showed was the outside of it.

SCOUT: There’s a basement with a gym, rowing machines …

JAKE: Showers …

RYDER: And the coach’s office.

CLAUDIA: And on the ground floor?

BELLA: Most of it’s a boat shed. But there’s a pinewood-paneled lounge with trophies and old team photos …

GRACE: A well-stocked kitchenette …

WILL: Coke machine …

SCOUT: CD player …

RYDER: Modular furniture …

GRACE: Conveniently re-arrangeable …

WILL: Plenty of blankets …

HAMILTON: And a view of the lake … as the sun sets … could be romantic.

BELLA (caressing WILL): Give me my Romeo; and, when I shall die …

GRACE (to CLAUDIA):  A euphemism.

BELLA: Take him and cut him out in little stars,  
           And he will make the face of heaven so fine  
           That all the world will be in love with night.

RYDER: Or we could re-watch the match and you could teach us German football songs … Ow!

CLAUDIA: Find something useful to do with that mouth, boy.

RYDER (nibbling her neck): _Zu Befehl, Prinzessin_.

CLAUDIA (to HAMILTON): Sounds lovely, thanks. … (To WILL:) But there’s something I should do first, isn’t there?

WILL: There is?

CLAUDIA: A swim in the lake?

WILL: Oh wow! … A symbolist! And you’ve been hiding it. This is gonna be so good …

CLAUDIA (rolling her eyes at RYDER): We all have our secrets. … Swim with me?

RYDER: My pleasure. … The town dock and back?

CLAUDIA: Where’s the floating one? You know, from episode episode seven, where you talk about the things you can’t change … (Looking at JAKE:) Like your personality.

JAKE (smiling at HAMILTON): “Questionable.”

CLAUDIA (smiling at RYDER): Unquestionably.

RYDER: It’s in the inlet between the girls’ school and the boys’ … just around that point.

CLAUDIA: Great. … (To JAKE:) Go inside. We’ll join you soon.

(CLAUDIA slips out of her robe and dives into the lake, closely followed by RYDER.)

Bella Banks (Kate Bosworth)  
episode seven of _Young Americans_

*          *          *


	4. Scene 4 - Swiss vault

EXT – FLOATING DOCK, LAKE RAWLEY.  DAY.

 

(CLAUDIA swims up to the floating dock, puts one hand on it, holds out the other to RYDER, swimming close behind her.)

RYDER (pulling in beside her): Sorry about that kiss.

CLAUDIA: Forrest, I’m not complaining.

RYDER: It wasn’t the way a first kiss should be.

CLAUDIA: You did it to stop me from hurting Hamilton, didn’t you?

RYDER: And Jacqueline.

CLAUDIA: Then it was love – perfect.

RYDER: Thanks.

CLAUDIA: Doesn’t mean the second one couldn’t be even better …

RYDER (caressing her face): You didn’t bring me here to be kissed.

CLAUDIA: No ...

RYDER: So we’ll chin wag. But first, check out the view.

CLAUDIA: I am …

RYDER (turning her around, holding her from behind): The school, imp – this is the center of it. … Up there, the front of the boys’ school. … (Turning CLAUDIA:) And over there, the back porch of the girls’ school.

CLAUDIA: Where Jake has lunch with her mom?

RYDER: The same.

CLAUDIA: And that building in between, at the head of the inlet?

RYDER: The hall.

CLAUDIA: It’s beautiful.  How come they never showed it?

RYDER: Would have undercut the diner – and the sexual tension.  It was co-ed, even fourteen years ago.

CLAUDIA: How’d that happen?

RYDER: Small school – and serious economies of scale in feeding people.

CLAUDIA: And that flatboat at the girls’ school dock?

RYDER: A chain ferry across the lake to town – hand cranked.

CLAUDIA: Nice. It’s new?

RYDER: We built it thirteen springs ago.

CLAUDIA: But those two kids on the ferry – aren’t they a little young?

RYDER: To be snogging?

CLAUDIA: To be at Rawley.

RYDER: They’re faculty kids.

CLAUDIA: Ah … They’re beautiful.

RYDER: They’re in love.

CLAUDIA: At what, thirteen?

RYDER: Almost.

CLAUDIA: Forrest …

RYDER: They’ve grown up together – and inside the story.

CLAUDIA: The guy seems to know what he’s doing.

RYDER: He’d better. Lena and I’ve taught him.

CLAUDIA: You’re kidding.

RYDER: He’s our godson.

CLAUDIA: At “almost thirteen”?

RYDER: It’s a work in progress – for now, about why he doesn’t need to do what he shouldn’t yet do in order to give her what he wants to give her.

CLAUDIA: Sorry. … Even the twelve-year olds here keep exceeding my expectations.

RYDER: Maybe you set them too low.

CLAUDIA: Yeh. … But that boy … he looks a little like Jacqueline …

RYDER: Don’t tell Hamilton.

CLAUDIA: Funny. … But the way moves ... especially in the water, like he belongs there … kinda reminds me of Finn.

RYDER: It should.

CLAUDIA: Finn had a son the summer after the one in the show?

RYDER (nuzzling): Uh – huh.

CLAUDIA: Tell me he’s not Kate’s.

RYDER: He’s not.

CLAUDIA: Thank god. … So if Hamilton doesn’t know – about his mom and Finn – who does?

RYDER: Just Will, Mark, me, newcomers like you – and the Dean.

CLAUDIA (wincing): Ewww …

RYDER: He checked to see whether the video camera really was broken.

CLAUDIA: And you and Finn are still here?

RYDER: Way better than that.

CLAUDIA: How?

RYDER (kissing her temple): We’ll tell you tonight.

CLAUDIA (purring): But with all the newcomers knowing, how’ve you kept it from Hamilton?

RYDER: People come here because they love him, so … we’re a Swiss vault.

CLAUDIA (after a pause): Forrest, what else shouldn’t I say?

RYDER: That’s our only secret.

CLAUDIA: Then there’s a lot I shouldn’t say.

RYDER: About what?

CLAUDIA: A lot of things. … Forrest, I’ve talked with a lot of people about Rawley, about the show. I’ve heard every crazy idea out there. And Krudski’s just crazy enough that some of them are starting to make sense.

RYDER: Oh … like about me?

CLAUDIA: Like about all of you.

RYDER: Claudia … we all know. 

CLAUDIA: You’re kidding.

RYDER: Will’s told us – beautifully. For example, for our third anniversary, Will gave Lena and me a DVD of the BBC version of _Brideshead Revisited_.

CLAUDIA: “The sacred and profane memories of Captain Charles Ryder”?

RYDER: Yes. And Bella and Will watched them with us.

CLAUDIA: And you like being a literary allusion?

RYDER: Maybe I’m more than that.

CLAUDIA: Alright, an allusion to Will’s cinematic muse. To the languorous Merchant-Ivory-like beauty, the interplay of sexuality, sacrifice and salvation ...  

RYDER: Claudia, the chap who wrote _Brideshead_ was called “the nastiest-tempered man in England,” loved only for “the beauty of his malice.” Know when he started being a rotter?

CLAUDIA: No.

RYDER: In his teens, when he was packed off to a college he didn’t much like.

CLAUDIA: You think you’re Evleyn Waugh?

RYDER: Depends on what you mean by “are.”

CLAUDIA: I kinda think he had he heart set on goin’ to the place with harps and wings.

RYDER: Ah … but did he like it?

CLAUDIA: Did he?

RYDER: If he didn’t, would it be loving to let him remember it?

CLAUDIA (muttering): And I thought Krudski was bad …

RYDER: Girl, who we were doesn’t matter.  It’s about rebirth, being young again ... growing.

CLAUDIA: And Scout?

RYDER: It was hard for him, at first – groomed to be a future Senator, giving that up to stay here.

CLAUDIA: So Will told him he’d already been one?

RYDER: You’ve seen it.

CLAUDIA: It’s kinda obvious who he’s modelled on.

RYDER: Will told him the night he figured out that Will was, well …

CLAUDIA: Old?

RYDER: Yeh.

CLAUDIA: Scout was scared that Will would leave him?

RYDER: Or be different, somehow. So Will got us all together that night, and asked Scout, “What makes you think I’m older than you are?” And told him that when Will really was young, Scout was the guy Will most admired … and cited a line on his tomb.

CLAUDIA:  “I dream things that never were, and say, ‘Why not?’”

RYDER: Yeh.

CLAUDIA: How’d Scout take it?

RYDER: We had a great night.

CLAUDIA: What about Scout’s interest in government?

RYDER: He’s refocused it locally.

CLAUDIA: Pretty big step down.

RYDER: Or up. Running a town where nobody over seventeen ages poses some unique challenges.

CLAUDIA: I’m sure. But between going to Rawley and working at the diner, Scout can’t have much time for that.

RYDER: Doesn’t take much time. The highest offices in a New England town government are unpaid part-time jobs – selectmen.

CLAUDIA: You’re kidding.

RYDER: New England towns are like small Swiss cantons – direct democracies. The selectmen just call the town meetings and propose agendas for them.

CLAUDIA: Heaven as direct democracy …

RYDER: Hey, Will asked for an all-knowing benevolent despot, but all he could get was a whining dork who shows that true love is possible.

CLAUDIA: Enough! … So Scout’s a … what did you call it?

RYDER: Selectman. One of three. And so’s Sean. ‘Cause now that almost all the kids at Rawley and Edmund are old enough to vote …

CLAUDIA: Got it. … And Bella? She knows – that outside the dream, in reality, Will’s …

RYDER: Gay?

CLAUDIA: Yeh.

RYDER: Only in the reality Will came here from. But in that reality, Bella’s just … what he brings to life by learning to love it truly, to use it to help people want to love each other better.

CLAUDIA: Symbolism? Irony? Ambiguity?

RYDER: Funny. … And in the reality he goes back to – ‘cause he’s not here permanently yet – she’s his wife.

CLAUDIA: Forrest, that totally makes no sense.

RYDER: Pygmalion?

CLAUDIA:  No …

RYDER: That dreams can change reality?

CLAUDIA: Directly, not by changing us? Yes.

RYDER: Girl, a gay guy’s dream of a perfect youth is one in which he turns out not to be gay – in which the guy he falls in love with turns into a girl when he kisses him.

CLAUDIA: So?

RYDER: Will put Hamilton into his own shoes, then granted Ham his own deepest wish.

CLAUDIA: Forrest, I get all that.

RYDER: Then why don’t you think Ham would give Will what Will gave him?

CLAUDIA: Because it’s impossible.

RYDER: This isn’t?

CLAUDIA: You are so messing with my head.

RYDER (nuzzling): Wrong part of you?

CLAUDIA: Forrest …

RYDER: Don’t try to understand it – we can’t. But you can talk about anything – except Kate and Finn.

CLAUDIA: So are Ham’s parents still together?

RYDER: You could ask Mary.

CLAUDIA: Mary?

RYDER: My godson’s girlfriend.

CLAUDIA: Why her?

RYDER: She’s Hamilton’s sister.

CLAUDIA: Oh my god ...

RYDER: Was that a squee?

CLAUDIA (turning to face him): Ass-bite.

RYDER: I’m incorrigible. And my godson, Jack, is Jacqueline’s half-brother.

(CLAUDIA wraps herself around RYDER, kissing him intensely.)

CLAUDIA (breaking off): How?

RYDER: Details tonight. And it’ll be good. ‘Cause one of us – the guy who pointed Finn at Jacqueline’s mom when Finn asked him why Jake hadn’t come back to Rawley fall term – is good at telling a story to grown-ups. Like, with symbolism, metaphors, irony, ambiguity, allusions, anachronisms, parallel structure …

CLAUDIA: And beauty.

RYDER: And beauty.

CLAUDIA: I’ve underestimated Will?

RYDER (locking foreheads): Nothing you and I can’t make right tonight.

CLAUDIA: Lena should be here.

RYDER: Just be yourself, beautiful. Stop asking whether you’re worthy of the dream.

CLAUDIA: But I’m not.

RYDER: None of us is. The trick is not to let that stop us from dreaming dreams worthy of us.

(RYDER kisses her gently, cradling her head.)

CLAUDIA (breaking off): Back to the boathouse?

RYDER: By way of the chain ferry?

CLAUDIA: Forrest, I’d love to meet them, but …

RYDER: They’re used to newcomers. And they’ll be feeling a bit left out tonight.   

CLAUDIA (smiling): Alright. … That we _can_ change – a little.  (She pushes off from the floating dock toward the chain ferry, pulling RYDER after her.)

Jake Pratt aka Jacqueline Pratt (Katherine Moennig)   
and Forrest Ryder aka Gregor Ryder (Charlie Hunnam)   
episode seven of _Young Americans_

*          *          *


	5. Scene 5 - The longest day

EXT – BOATHOUSE, RAWLEY ACADEMY FOR BOYS.  DAY.

(Only two towels, CLAUDIA’s beach robe, her sandals, and RYDER’s topsiders remain on the boathouse dock as RYDER and CLAUDIA swim back to it, side-stroking, facing each other.

RYDER pulls himself up onto the dock, grabs a towel, wraps CLAUDIA in it as he helps her out of the water, then helps her into her robe.  She starts to dry her hair, looking out over the lake.)

RYDER (grabbing the second towel): We have company.

CLAUDIA (turning, looking toward the boathouse): Oh my god …

(On the boathouse porch, near an open front window, HAMILTON and JAKE and WILL and BELLA, still in beach wear, are enfolding and nuzzling another couple – a [tall, blond boy](http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/dawsonscreek/images/e/e9/Dawson_Leery_DC.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150110054053) in open shirt and jeans and a [thin blonde girl](http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/dawsonscreek/images/6/66/Jen-Lindley-on-Dawsons-Creek1-e1396295260648.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150111051733) in a summer dress.  In the boathouse parking lot, the Rawley GROUNDSKEEPER, wearing a chauffeur’s uniform that seems a bit snug for his ample waist, unloads a box from the trunk of a limo.)

RYDER: You know them?

CLAUDIA (incredulous): You don’t?

(RYDER shoots her a mildly reproving glance.)

CLAUDIA: Sorry. Don’t you ever watch teen dramas?

RYDER (drying himself): Our groundskeeper does. 

CLAUDIA: That’s him, in the chauffeur’s outfit?

RYDER: Yeh. … The rest of us find living in a teen drama enough. Are there others this good?

CLAUDIA: No, sadly. But some are better known. And those two are stars of, like, the most famous.

RYDER: So where are they from?

CLAUDIA: Capeside. The town Will visited during the spring break before he started at Rawley.

RYDER: Oh yeh … I’ve heard about that. So that couple – they’re true love, too?

CLAUDIA: No, Forrest – just the opposite. She was his destiny – and he ran from it. She needed him, as much as Jake needed Hamilton, but he couldn’t deal with her problems. They strung it out for six seasons, but in the end, she dies of a thinly veiled metaphor for a broken heart.

RYDER (wincing): She’s beautiful. What was his problem?

CLAUDIA (sighing): He rejected reality. Longed for simpler times. Lived in Steven Spielberg films as the next best thing. He wanted to opt out of the whole messy modern mate-selection thing and just marry the girl next door, a friend he’d grown up with. Assumed he would – thought he was entitled to.

RYDER: But he didn’t?

CLAUDIA: No, she wasn’t having it – took up with his best friend. And he didn’t take it well. Will was there when it happened.

RYDER: No wonder Will never talks about it.

CLAUDIA: Then how’d you hear about it?

RYDER: From newcomers like you. … And even after the girl next door wouldn’t have him, that tosser still didn’t go for the girl who needed him?

CLAUDIA: No. He made a TV show in which he and the girl next door marry and live happily ever after.

RYDER: Well, he seems to have come ‘round.

CLAUDIA: He’s had eleven years to think about it.

RYDER: No wonder our friends are all over them.

CLAUDIA: Shall we go help?

RYDER (smiling, slipping into his topsiders): Just what Lena would say ... except …

CLAUDIA (slipping into her sandals): She wouldn’t have phrased it as a question?

RYDER: Yeh.

CLAUDIA (taking his hand): Let’s go, boy.

(As RYDER and CLAUDIA approach, the group on the porch disengages slightly.)

WILL: Jen, Dawson, this is Forrest Ryder, a second-year here, and Claudia … ?

CLAUDIA: Just Claudia. Just a fan, and just visiting – I think.

WILL: Jen Lindley and Dawson Leery, from …

RYDER: Capeside, we know. Claudia told me. … (To DAWSON:) Welcome to Rawley.

DAWSON: Thanks.

RYDER (to JEN): I gather you’ve been here a while.

JEN: Yeh. Long story – eleven years long.

RYDER (to HAMILTON): You knew?

HAMILTON: Nope. Just met Jen while you were off swimming.

JAKE (nuzzling JEN): And none too soon. At last, another ex-New-Yorker to help me corrupt the provincials.

RYDER (to WILL): So why haven’t we met her?

WILL: Because their show is, like, seminal …

JEN (nuzzling DAWSON): Interesting metaphor.

WILL: It’s a term of art. … (To RYDER:) Their show is wildly popular – everywhere. Someone is always watching.

DAWSON: Till today, we’ve never had a minute off, ever. Even on Christmas Eve, some Muslim or Hindu or Chinese is playing the DVD or watching us on Netflix.

JAKE: You’re streamed on Netflix? And you have an authorized DVD release?

DAWON: Well yeh. … You don’t?

JAKE (glumly): There’s a problem with the soundtrack rights.

DAWSON: Count your blessings.

WILL (to RYDER): So Jen’s been, well …

BELLA: Dormant. In our attic, above the gas station.

WILL: Kinda like Sleeping Beauty.

DAWSON: And so has Capeside. When we finally got some time off today, the calendars still read May 14, 2003.

BELLA (to RYDER): The day their show ended.

CLAUDIA: Not 2010 or 2006? World Cup’s every four years.

WILL: Four years ago, their show was still being aired in re-runs, like, non-stop.

CLAUDIA: Oh …

RYDER (to JEN): But how’d you come here?

JEN: Eleven years ago, Will heard I was sick, and came to visit. He brought a recording of your show, told me that if I liked it, I could come here ... ‘cause I wasn’t sold on …

RYDER: The traditional alternative?

JEN: Yeh. Grams and I watched it, and loved it, so …

WILL (flattered): Grams liked it?

JEN: Will, she was totally blown away by Rawley … (To HAMILTON:) By you. Saw things I’d never have seen in the show, like, right away. Understood what it was really about – and fell in love with it. I think she’ll come here soon, maybe …

CLAUDIA: Uh, isn’t your Grams kinda set on going to …

JEN: The traditional alternative? She was … not any more.

HAMILTON: Grams?

CLAUDIA: Jen’s grandmother.

DAWSON: Best character in our show.

JEN (hugging DAWSON): Thank you.

DAWSON: It’s the truth. … (To HAMILTON:) Grams starts out strictly, traditionally religious – and very disapproving of Jen. But she’s really loving, so she grows – becomes even more loving … and more truly religious.

WILL: She’s the character who gets the point of their show – that modernity has made being young way harder and more complex than it used to be, that the conditions our traditional sexual morality evolved in are gone, and can’t be recovered … 

DAWSON: No matter how much we want to turn back the clock – like I have, while I’ve been an escapist jerk, totally wrapped up in myself. … And Jen, every minute of these past eleven years, while I’ve been doing that over and over, I’ve wished …

JEN: Dawson, you said all that in the limo. It was beautiful.  And once was enough. … But about Grams …

DAWSON (nuzzling): Mmmm?

JEN: There’s a problem. … (To WILL:) My gramps. He died years ago.

HAMILTON: They loved each other?

JEN: Totally.

JAKE: Then they’ll be together. They’ll choose together.

HAMILTON: Don’t worry about it.

JEN: Thanks.

WILL: Anyhow, when we remembered that people would stop watching us during and after the World Cup final, it occurred to me that people might stop watching Jen and Dawson this time, too …

CLAUDIA: So you hired a limo to bring Dawson here?

WILL: Scout owns the limo. He wanted to be part of this.

CLAUDIA: Where are he and Grace, anyhow?

GRACE (from inside the boathouse): In here, working. We’ll be out in a minute.

BELLA: But the limo wasn’t just to bring Dawson here. Mark, Ryder and I bundled Jen into it and Mark and Anne went with her to Capeside in time to be there when the soccer match started …

DAWSON: So when Jen and I, like, woke up for the first time in eleven years, she was stepping out of a limo in front of my house …

CLAUDIA (awed): Like she’d stepped out of a taxi in her first scene in the first episode of your show. … (To WILL:) You let them start over.

WILL (shrugging): Symbolism. I’m hopeless.

CLAUDIA: You’re beautiful. … (To BELLA:) May I?

BELLA: Go for it.

CLAUDIA: Well done, boy. … (She kisses WILL's cheek. To JEN:) So you and Dawson came here in the limo, together?

DAWSON: And Jen told me the story … about Jake and Hamilton.

JEN (to WILL): And Mr. Haggerty filled us in, briefly, about what’s happened since then.

CLAUDIA: Wait … Haggerty? That name’s familiar …

WILL (nuzzling CLAUDIA): Episode four? The bike I use to take Bella from the cotillion to the gas station?

CLAUDIA: Oh yeh … but that belonged to a _Mrs_. Haggerty.

HAMILTON: Our groundskeeper’s wife. Runs our dining service.

CLAUDIA: Ah …

RYDER (to DAWSON): So where are Anne and Mark?

DAWSON: Staying at Capeside for a few hours to deal with my parents and Jen’s Grams …

JEN: They were kinda surprised to see me again.

CLAUDIA: I’m sure.

WILL (To RYDER): Anne and Mark will take the train here this evening.

GRACE (emerging from the boathouse, to CLAUDIA): Good swim?

CLAUDIA: Very good, thanks. I especially liked the ferry. … (To JAKE:) I’m looking forward to our ferry rides to and from town this evening. I think you’ll really enjoy that.

JAKE: I’ve taken the ferry before.

CLAUDIA: You have new ferry masters. They’re adorable – and talented.

GRACE: Will – Mr. Haggerty’s finished unloading. Do you need him for anything else?

WILL: Thanks, Grace. I’ll tell him he can go. … (To the others:) Excuse me.

JAKE (holding WILL’s arm): Will - let Hamilton and me, please. I haven’t spoken to Mr. Haggerty yet.

WILL (smiling): Sure.

JEN: And Dawson and I’d like to thank him. … (Putting a hand on HAMILTON’s arm, to JAKE): May I?

JAKE (wrapping an arm around DAWSON, smiling up at him): My pleasure.

(JEN and HAMILTON follow JAKE and DAWSON toward the GROUNDSKEEPER, now closing the trunk of the limo.)

GRACE (to WILL and BELLA): Think those four could have a future?

WILL: One day every four years?

GRACE: Yeh. We gotta do something about that.

BELLA: For sure.

(SCOUT emerges from the boathouse carrying a card table.)

RYDER: What’s that for?

SCOUT (unfolding the legs of the table): Ms. Haggerty sent us first-night dinner for ten, to go.

GRACE: Care of her husband. It’s what he was unloading.

SCOUT (setting the card table up at the end of the picnic table at the far end of the porch): Two kids who haven’t eaten in eleven years is a situation to which the Haggertys respond compulsively.

WILL (holding the door for SCOUT): Three folding chairs and ten sets of everything?

SCOUT (going back inside): And two tray tables for the serving bowls.

(WILL follows SCOUT inside.)

RYDER (to CLAUDIA): Stay here with Grace and Bella. Scout, Will and I are pros at this. (He goes inside.)

CLAUDIA (to BELLA): Forrest works at the diner now?

BELLA: He’s only in three episodes. So sometimes, when Scout and Will space out …

CLAUDIA: I thought you said that when you come back from reliving it, the time’s the same as when you left.

GRACE: It is. But people still wanna eat, even when the clocks stop.

CLAUDIA: That’s …

BELLA: A mystery. One of many.

GRACE: Like true love.

(SCOUT and RYDER re-emerge, SCOUT carrying a stack of ten plates, RYDER three folding chairs and two folding tray tables.)

CLAUDIA: So what’s the downside?

BELLA: To what?

CLAUDIA: All of this – being sixteen forever.

(WILL emerges carrying ten Coke bottles and atop a cafeteria tray.)

GRACE: Like, what kind of downside?

CLAUDIA: Uh … Relations with the outside? Parents? Alumni?

BELLA: Claudia, the parents and alumni couldn’t be happier – or more generous.

CLAUDIA: But you’re not taking new out-of-town students – not even alumni kids. And the students really never go home.

BELLA: No, we do take new out-of-town students. It’s just that our admission criteria have changed.

GRACE: And with every passing year, out-of-town parents and alumni come closer to meeting them.

CLAUDIA: Oh …

(SCOUT, WILL and RYDER re-enter the boathouse, leaving ten places set with plates and Cokes, and two tray tables set up at the far end of the table.)

BELLA: Parents’ weekends have become kinda like prospective-student orientation.

GRACE: And Hamilton’s still very good as a tour guide.

CLAUDIA: I’m sure. … But don’t people, like … notice?

GRACE: No more than they notice a girl pretending to be a boy at an all-boys’ boarding school.

BELLA: And for pretty much the same reason.

CLAUDIA: And no parents or alumni blab?

BELLA: Some did, early on.

GRACE: They tended to lose their jobs and spend time in psych wards.

BELLA: Since then … not so many.

(SCOUT, WILL and RYDER again re-emerge, this time with trays of bowls, silverware, napkins, salt, pepper, and olive oil.)

BELLA: People have learned that the best way to tell their friends about Rawley is just to give them a thumb drive with the show on it.

GRACE: Or tell them where to watch it online.

BELLA: If that doesn’t do it … nothing will, really.

(From the parking lot comes the sound of the limo engine starting. BELLA, GRACE and CLAUDIA watch the GROUNDSKEEPER drive off in it, as HAMILTON, JAKE, DAWSON and JEN wave goodbye to him – then watch HAMILTON and JAKE pull JEN AND DAWSON in for a two-couple snog.)

GRACE: Surprise, surprise.

BELLA: Yeh, totally.

CLAUDIA: Healing the hurt. … Jacqueline’s like Ham now, isn’t she?

BELLA: Maybe even more so.

CLAUDIA: So … there’s no downside? No problems in paradise?

BELLA: No, there’s a problem.

GRACE: But it’s not because we’re sixteen forever.

BELLA: It’s because Jacqueline’s not here ten months a year.

CLAUDIA: Can’t you spend weekends with Ham and Jacqueline at her winter school?

BELLA: We do. … But there’s something we’ll miss even more than Ham and Jacqueline, eventually.

CLAUDIA: What?

(SCOUT, WILL and RYDER again re-enter the boathouse.)

BELLA: Claudia, of the seven almost-thirty-year-old girls you’ll be with tonight, not one will be hiring a babysitter.

CLAUDIA: You can’ have kids?

GRACE: We can. Some girls here our age or younger have had kids.

CLAUDIA: But you can only get pregnant when Jacqueline’s here?

(BELLA and GRACE crack up laughing.)

WILL (from inside): What’s so funny?

BELLA: I’ll tell you later. Keep working, boy. … (Recovering, to CLAUDIA:) No, Jacqueline’s not _that_ much like Persephone.

GRACE: But we’re all here for Hamilton and her. And they’re in no position to raise kids.

BELLA: So … we aren’t either. And it’s not just the couples in our crew. Most couples our age or younger feel the same way.

GRACE: In town and at the prep school.

CLAUDIA: What about Ham’s parents – and Finn and Jacqueline’s mom?

BELLA: The Dean and Kate and Finn and Monica have offered. But Ham and Jacqueline don’t want their kids to be, like, their siblings.

GRACE: They’ll all end up the same age physically. If they’ve also been raised by the same parents …

CLAUDIA: I get it.

GRACE: And if any of the rest of us raise their kids …

BELLA: The distinction between family and lovers gets blurry. And a generation or two down the road …

GRACE: There could be problems – as Scout and Bella remember all too well.

CLAUDIA: So it’s not just Hamilton and Jacqueline who’ve given up happily-ever-after.  You all have.

GRACE: We hope not.

CLAUDIA: You see a way out?

BELLA: We haven’t. But there’s a couple that may have.

CLAUDIA: Who?

(SCOUT, WILL and RYDER, now in khaki or white cotton slacks and wearing open short-sleeve white dress shirts, emerge carrying a large tureen-and-ladle and two large serving bowls covered with cloth napkins.)

BELLA: If it turns out you’re here to stay, we’ll tell you.

CLAUDIA: Fair enough. …

(SCOUT, WILL and RYDER set their burdens down on the tray tables and approach the girls.)

CLAUDIA (to RYDER): You dressed for dinner.

RYDER: We have lockers downstairs.

WILL: And Scout insisted.

SCOUT: It’s first-night dinner.

CLAUDIA (nodding toward the two still-intertwined couples in the parking lot): You gentlemen feel bold enough to interrupt that?

WILL: Not a problem.

SCOUT: We have a dinner bell.

(WILL opens the door for SCOUT and follows him inside.)

CLAUDIA (to RYDER, wrinkling her nose): A dinner bell?

RYDER: Gotta love tradition.

(From inside the boathouse, Sarah McLachlan’s “[Angel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqmyxQrbGc4)” begins to play. JAKE and HAMILTON break off, look toward the porch, and begin to lead DAWSON and JEN toward it. SCOUT and WILL re-emerge, WILL carrying a napkin-covered bowl, SCOUT a lit glass-sleeved candle and a white short-sleeved dress shirt.)

CLAUDIA (taking RYDER’s arm): Nice bell.

SCOUT (setting the candle on the table): Works every time.

WILL (setting the bowl a tray table): Like catnip.

JAKE (taking the shirt from SCOUT, kissing him on the cheek): Thanks. (She helps HAMILTON into the shirt.)

JEN: This is beautiful.

DAWSON: It is. Jen and I can’t thank you all enough.

GRACE: Dawson, we all feel that way.

JAKE: We’ve all been given second chances.

BELLA: And the only person you need to worry about thanking tonight is Jen. So … (Mimicking E.T., pointing a forefinger at DAWSON:) “Beeee goooood.”

JEN (laughing, pulling DAWSON closer): He already has been.

SCOUT (leading GRACE to the tray tables): For our dining pleasure, Rawley Academy’s dining service presents …

GRACE (briefly uncovering a large serving bowl): Corn on the cob …

RYDER (to CLAUDIA): Very Yank but very good.

SCOUT (briefly uncovering the other large serving bowl): Fried Ipswich clams … (Touching the tureen):  New England clam chowder …

GRACE (uncovering the third, smaller bowl): And fresh Massachusetts cherries, now in peak season.

SCOUT: To be followed, later this evening, by ice cream sundaes at the diner – for those of us going into town.

HAMILTON: Scout, we’re all going into town.

JAKE: And to Finn’s suite, where Dawson and Jen have accepted our offer of a room. Some of us can make out and talk at the same time, Calhoun.

SCOUT (wincing): Ewww …

DAWSON (laughing, pulling JEN closer): Where you guys go, Jen and I’ll go.

JEN: We’re going to act as if the next World Cup final were tomorrow …

DAWSON: ‘Cause for us, it probably is.

JEN (nibbling DAWSON): And ‘cause it’s what Steven Spielberg would want.

DAWSON (biting JEN’s neck): Manhattanite! … (To WILL and BELLA): Help me make her pay for that tonight?

BELLA: Our pleasure.

HAMILTON (to DAWSON): Wanna know the secret to taming a New York girl?

DAWSON: Great sex?

HAMILTON: New England clam chowder. Feed her seconds of it and she’ll give you her corn on the cob.

JAKE: In your dreams, Fleming.

HAMILTON: Shall we start?

DAWSON: Definitely.

Hamilton Fleming (Ian Somerhalder)   
closing narrator's comment, episode three of _Young Americans_

Screenshot at top is Will Krudski (Rodney Scott)   
opening narrator's comment, episode one of _Young Americans_

*          *          *


	6. Scene 6 - Time for a quickie

INT – FRIENDLY’S DINER, NEW RAWLEY. DAY.

(The diner’s full, mostly of apparently high-school aged couples, humming with teenage voices. Laptops are open on several booths – the diner plainly has wi-fi now. SCOUT and WILL, in jeans and dark-blue short-sleeve Friendly’s-uniform polo shirts, are on duty as waiters, SCOUT behind the counter, WILL serving the booths. [SEAN McGrail](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/rN1H3c9dQ5Ugn5lxGAqhCDUYw7m45MWgKabHULCgRTY=w272-h204-p-no) is seated at the counter, between GRACE and LIZ Johnson, drinking Coke as they eat ice cream sundaes. SEAN and GRACE wear cut-offs, SEAN a white “Rawley Crew” T-shirt with the book-and-crowns of ~~Oxford University~~  Rawley Academy embroidered on its front, GRACE a halter-top, LIZ a deep-fronted playsuit.

Across New Rawley’s Main Street, seen through the front window, JAKE’s motorbike is parked at Charlie Banks' gas station, in front of Charlie’s 1950-vintage green pickup truck, two helmets strapped to its handlebars. Under the gas station’s 1920s-style canopy, CAROLINE Busse, drinking a glass-bottled Coke, talks with HAMILTON, JAKE and BELLA in front of the late-1940s gas pumps, now topped with the glowing globes they were originally designed to hold. BELLA wears cut-offs and a white tank top, CAROLINE a white summer dress, HAMILTON dark blue sweatpants and a white “Rawley Crew” T-shirt like SEAN’s, with JAKE’s red backpack slung over a shoulder. JAKE, hair now cut short and chest flattened, wears baggy denim jeans and a black leather jacket over a long-sleeved sweatshirt and a white tee-shirt.

A car pulls into the gas station. HAMILTON kisses BELLA’s forehead, takes JAKE’s hand. As BELLA greets her customer, HAMILTON and JAKE hug CAROLINE, find a gap in the traffic, cross Main Street and enter the diner. JAKE’s clothes, and HAMILTON’s sweatpants, are visibly damp.)

WILL (taking an order at a booth): Hi guys!

SEVERAL CUSTOMERS: Hi Jacqueline!

JAKE (smiling, as HAMILTON helps her out of her jacket): Hi. … (To WILL): Business is booming, huh?

WILL: Better every year. A whole town full of ever-more-gainfully employed, prep-school-educated thirty-year-olds who still gobble ice cream and French fries as though they were teenagers.

(As HAMILTON hangs JAKE’s backpack and jacket on a peg by the door, a townie couple working at laptops in booth three to rise greet them – LUKE, from the porch scene at the townie party in episode two of the original drama, and his girlfriend GINA Greer, on whose feet BELLA comments at that party.)

LUKE (taking JAKE’s hands): Welcome back, Jacqueline.

JAKE: Thanks, Luke. It’s good to be home.

GINA (wrapping an arm around HAMILTON): Sorry we missed you last night.

JAKE (pulling LUKE close for a two-couple hug): Gina, I’ll be here all summer. … Sean, is your townie-party afterparty next week still on this year?

SEAN: Unless Calhoun's over his compulsion to kiss me after we fight.

GRACE: Not a chance. Scout’s already mumbling your name in his sleep.

(SCOUT rolls his eyes and continues his work.)

HAMILTON (kissing GINA’s head): Then Jake and I’ll be there – right after we liberate her bike.

GINA (smiling): So will Luke and I. … (Disengaging, to JAKE:) Would you like our booth?

LUKE: We’re just finishing up a new account – nothing we can’t do later.

JAKE: The crowdfunding venture prospers?

LUKE: It does. You and Scout were so right about where this could go.

SCOUT: And our location’s perfect. Better even than the Cayman Islands. We’re totally off the map.

LUKE: The state securities division doesn’t seem to need a map.

JAKE (kissing LUKE’s cheek): The wonders of the digital age. I look forward to hearing about it. … (To GINA:) But Hamilton and I are still drying out from Finn’s swimming lesson. So we’ll pass on the booth.

LUKE (disengaging, squeezing JAKE’s hand): If you change your mind, it’s yours.

(LUKE and GINA return to their booth. HAMILTON and JAKE approach GRACE, SEAN and LIZ at the counter.)

SEAN (standing): Hi Jacqueline, Ham.

JAKE: Hi, Sean. (She kisses him on the cheek.)

HAM (kissing the girls:) Hi, Grace … Liz.

LIZ: Hi, Ham.

(SEAN, by gesture, offers his counter stool to JAKE.)

JAKE: Thanks, but I really will dry faster if I stand.

SEAN (sighing): Looks like we have an empty stool, then. If I were to sit down again, my after-the-fight snog with Calhoun next week would turn into an etiquette lesson.

LIZ: And that would ruin the evening for everyone.

WILL (approaching, outside the counter, with a covered silver service plate): Perhaps Bella and I might help. … (Bowing slightly, he uncovers the service plate to reveal, neatly folded, BELLA’s short elastic-waist pull-on skirt that JAKE wore in the last episode of the original drama. To JAKE:) Better a dry Bonnie than a wet Clyde.

JAKE (laughing, taking the skirt): Thanks.

WILL (to JAKE, while re-covering the plate and passing it to SCOUT, behind the counter): I believe the restroom’s vacant. And ditch the binder and sweatshirt, please.

JAKE: Can’t ditch both. My T-shirt’s soaked.

WILL (softly, nuzzling JAKE’s neck): If the guys in this diner don’t see more than that at next week’s afterparty, they’re gonna be very disappointed.

JAKE (fondling WILL’s chest): They’ll see when they can touch. Unlike you with poor Scout, Krudski, I am not a tease.

GRACE (to WILL): She so has your number.

(SCOUT keeps on working.)

JAKE (turning her attentions to HAMILTON): And my assets don’t go public till Saturday, when I bare them to save Hammy from two hundred happy Rawley guys in boxers right after he walks through the boys’ dorm moaning, “Oh my god I think I’m gay.”

LIZ (to HAMILTON): “Throwing convention out the window and exceeding expectations.”

HAMILTON: That’s so bizarre.

JAKE (to HAMILTON): You love it.

HAMILTON (nuzzling): I love it more when their girls join us.

WILL (to JAKE): Keep the sweatshirt if you must. But you know the dress code. (He points to a sign over the door to the kitchen:)

 

**NO BINDERS**

except on re-enactment business

 

JAKE: This place was more laid-back before you bought it, Krudski.

WILL: What better use of my royalties than to see more of you?

JAKE: I don’t recall your eyes being shut last night.

WILL (nuzzling): I’m insatiable. And I have compassion for my less fortunate customers.

(SEAN, clearing his throat, fingers WILL’s shirt and jerks his eyes toward JAKE.)

WILL (to SEAN): I’m on duty.

LIZ (sighing): Chivalry is dead.

WILL: The Commonwealth’s Department of Public Health prefers that food servers wear shirts.

SEAN (to the whole diner, loudly): Gentlemen … the lady needs a dry shirt.

(SEAN goes down on one knee, pulls off his shirt, holds it out to JAKE. LUKE, followed by every other guy in the diner – except SCOUT, WILL and HAMILTON – stands, walks toward JAKE, and follows SEAN’s example. JAKE shoots a half-suppressed grin at HAMILTON, who rolls his eyes.)

JAKE (to LIZ): Rawley.

LIZ: Aptly named.

GRACE: Yeh, but this beats the mud puddle and cloak version.

(JAKE hands the skirt to HAMILTON, raises SEAN to his feet, says his first name, takes his shirt, kisses him lightly – then does the same with each of the dozen guys kneeling before her.)

JAKE: Sean … Luke … Josh … Ralph … Gordon … Paul … Jim … Kyle … Joe … Frank … Tom … Winston. … (Handing the shirts to SCOUT, loudly:) Calhoun, keep these till their owners ask for their checks, which are on me … (Even more loudly:) If their girls tell you they’ve earned it.

(Cheers, applause, and whistles from the girls in the booths and at the counter.)

JAKE: Back to your booths and stools, gentlemen. Make yourselves useful.

(The now-shirtless guys, grinning, return to their seats and their appreciative girlfriends. SEAN pulls in behind LIZ, nuzzling.)

JAKE (all eyes still on her, to HAMILTON): Well?

(HAMILTON lifts JAKE onto the stool vacated by SEAN, pulls off her sweatshirt and hands it to GRACE, pulls BELLA’s skirt over her head, down to her waist, and then back up, under her wet Rawley crew T-shirt, to her armpits. His hands re-emerge holding JAKE’s binder, which he hands to GRACE.)

GRACE (taking the binder, smiling): An old friend.

JAKE: Try not to keep it this time.

(HAMILTON pulls off JAKE’s T-shirt, hands it to GRACE.)

HAMILTON (pulling back slightly to admire JAKE): Like you come with a trip to Hawaii.

JAKE: Keep goin’.

(HAMILTON pulls his Rawley crew T-shirt off himself and onto JAKE, reaches up under it, pulls the skirt down to JAKE’s waist, lifts her off the stool to stand on the floor, kneels down, removes her jeans, hands them to GRACE, stands, lifts JAKE back on the stool, raises one of her hands above her head, twirls her slowly around on the stool.

The diner erupts in applause and shouts for a kiss. HAMILTON, holding JAKE’s head, obliges. GRACE and SCOUT exchange smiles.)

JAKE (breaking off): You’ll do, boy.

WILL (surveying the diner): Not quite the dress code I had in mind.

SEAN: You reap what you sow, Krudsksi.

GRACE: Really. … (Sliding off her stool, setting JAKE’s damp clothes on it, going down on one knee, taking WILL’s hand, batting her eyes at him, mimicking WILL’s voice:) “Bella, will you pleeeease go to the cotillion with me?” – And my oblivious sister _still_ didn’t get it.

WILL (raising GRACE up): She couldn’t … until the parallel story-lines intersected.

GRACE: Your mom got it. I got it. Even the viewers get it. Claudia said last night she started to get it at the end of episode one, when Bella's carried out of the lake in your arms – not Scout’s.

GINA (coyly, teasing LUKE’s chest): So did you trash Bella’s party dress on purpose – to make her wear your mom’s wedding gown?

GRACE: On purpose? Oh yeh. … (Looking first at WILL, then at HAMILTON:) But not my purpose. I was symbolic irony on steroids, the Hand of Providence disguised as a pair of wet panties …

SCOUT: Grace!

GRACE: Sorry.

LIZ (to SCOUT): But she’s right. As the show’s ostensibly least philosophical character says in its most philosophical line … (She eye-cues Sean.) …

SEAN (pulling GRACE close, kissing her temple): “Grace is Grace.” And we love you.

HAMILTON (reaching out to caress GRACE’s head): Always.

GRACE: I know. … (To SCOUT:) “I once was lost but now am found” … (To HAMILTON:) “Was blind but now I see.”

JAKE (softly, nuzzling GRACE): You’re not alone. … And Hammy and I are looking forward to next year.

GRACE (looking into JAKE’s eyes): So are Scout and I. … (Disengaging:) And if I stay here longer I’m gonna seriously embarrass him. … (Picking up JAKE’s damp clothes:) I’ll pop your guy rags into our drier. … (To WILL:) Have you got enough whipped cream, or has my boyfriend scarfed it all?

WILL: Enough to last till tomorrow’s delivery, I think. Why?

GRACE: Duh! … Because for your female customers, it’s Christmas in July, boy.

WILL (looking toward the booths, at which laptops are closing): No … they wouldn’t.

LIZ (nibbling SEAN’s chest): You’re sure?

JAKE (doing the same to HAMILTON): Very sure?

WILL: Oh god …

GRACE (looking at WILL): The eternal virgin. … The boy who, my sister says, makes every time seem like the first time even when she’s still reelin’ from the last time. … (To SCOUT:) How does he do it?

SCOUT: It’s a mystery. … (Mimicking WILL’s voice:) “Maybe it's because I'm young …”

HAMILTON (nuzzling JAKE): “Maybe it's because it's summer. …”

JAKE (drowning in HAMILTON’s eyes): “Maybe it's because I'm at Rawley. …”

GRACE: Right. … I’ll send Bella over with a couple cans of boy sauce. Hold my stool for her?

HAMILTON: For sure, Grace. Thanks.

(GRACE, carrying JAKE’s guy clothes, exits the diner, crosses the street to the gas station. SCOUT clears her nearly-empty glass.)

WILL (blushing, to JAKE): Bella really says that?

SCOUT (wiping the counter, to WILL): Booths two and five look ready for dessert.

WILL: Oh yeh. … Excuse me.

(As WILL picks up a tray from the end of the counter, and goes to clear plates from a booth, SCOUT, HAMILTON, JAKE, SEAN and LIZ exchange soft smiles.)

JAKE: So, McGrail, does your stool come with Edmund High’s best backrest?

SEAN (after getting a smile from LIZ): Definitely. … (He kisses LIZ’s neck, disengages from her. Pulling in behind JAKE, to HAMILTON): But heiresses need backrests too.

LIZ (sighing plaintively): We do.

HAMILTON: My pleasure. … (Pulling in behind LIZ, kissing her temple:) Hi, heiress.

LIZ (turning her head back): Mmmm … (She kisses HAMILTON lightly. Breaking off:) Richer summers than winters ... or springs … or autumns. 

SEAN (enfolding JAKE): We all are.

LIZ (to JAKE): But the newcomers are worth it.

SCOUT: They are. … So Jacqueline, what’s your pleasure?

JAKE (purring, caressing SEAN’s arms): A drink. Surprise me.

SCOUT: Your trust shall be rewarded. Ham?

HAMILTON: A chocolate shake?

SCOUT (placing two napkins and sundae spoons on the counter in front of JAKE and LIZ): Not a chance. 

WILL (carrying a tray full of dirty plates behind the counter): This is a class joint. Our drink glasses are made of glass.

SCOUT: And milkshakes do not look like Cokes.

SEAN: As well you know. … (To JAKE:) But now that you’re here, Cokes are all Ham has to whine about.

SCOUT (to HAMILTON): Your usual milkshake substitute?

HAMILTON (sighing): Yes, please.

SCOUT: One Coke float with vanilla ice cream, coming up. (He exits into the kitchen.)

LIZ: So where are Forrest and Claudia?

SEAN: And Anne and Mark?

WILL (sticking two dessert orders on the spindle of the kitchen pass-through): Claudia went back.

SEAN: Thank god. She was way too young to check in here forever.

WILL: Yeh, but she went back in what was, for Forrest, the worst possible way.

LIZ: Oh no. They weren’t …

WILL (laughing): No. … Alright, the second-worst possible way.

HAMILTON: Forrest had taken Claudia out rowing in a coxless pair, while we were out on the lake for our first rowing practice.

JAKE: And Finn, right after telling us that Shakespeare is his favorite author, was giving us his thinly-veiled passion-comes-from-the-groin allusion to “Where is fancy bred?”

WILL (loading plates from the kitchen pass-through onto a tray): Claudia’d gotten the hang of it, and she and Forrest were following our shell as we rowed past the girls’ school beach.

JAKE: And Finn was warning the guys to keep their eyes in the boat …

HAMILTON: When suddenly, Claudia started to fade.

WILL: Forrest grabbed for her …

LIZ: “But all he got was air”?

WILL: Funny. … (He carries the tray to a booth.)

HAMILTON: He caught a huge crab. Both oars unmanned, the shell moving at a good clip …

LIZ (wincing): Ewww … Capsized?

JAKE: Wickedly. Hit his head on an oar. And we couldn’t do squat, ‘cause we had to row off to hear Finn’s catechism and get baptized.

(SCOUT re-emerges from the kitchen carrying two large glasses, each containing two scoops of ice cream, to the soda machine behind the far end of he counter.)

HAMILTON: Of course, the girls from the beach swam out to help Forrest …

JAKE: And Anne and Mark swam over from the floating dock …

SCOUT: So did Jack, from the ferry. He was the first to reach Forrest. Never saw a twelve-year-old swim so fast.

HAMILTON (smiling at JAKE): Good genes.

JAKE (rolling her eyes): Exercise. He’s fanatical about being in shape for your sister.

LIZ: He worships Forrest. … So is our favorite reformed ass-bite OK?

JAKE: Seems fine.  Off his feet for a few hours in case he might be concussed.

HAMILTON: But that’s no way to part from someone you care for.

JAKE: And Forrest did care for Claudia.

LIZ: Yeh … Sean and I noticed.

SCOUT (returning with two Coke floats): She’ll be back. … (Serving, to JAKE:) One surprise. … (To HAMILTON:) And one Coke milkshake.

JAKE (coyly): No whipped cream?

SCOUT: No.

HAMILTON: Thank you.

SCOUT: You’re welcome.

JAKE (taking her float, to LIZ): Maybe you and I should buy a diner.

LIZ: It’s a thought.

JAKE (attacking her float:) Oh, that’s good. … Rum raisin?

SCOUT: Uh –huh.

JAKE (digging deeper): And black raspberry.

SCOUT: Yep.

JAKE: And … a hint of ginger?

SCOUT: It is a pleasure to serve a true connoisseuse.

(HAMILTON rolls his eyes at SCOUT. LIZ picks up HAMILTON’s float, begins feeding him.

JOSH Carson, CAROLINE’s cotillion date in the original drama, rises from the counter-side window booth, at which two couples work at laptops.  He opens the front door, through which BELLA and CAROLINE enter, BELLA carrying two cans of whipped cream.)

BELLA: Thanks, Josh. … (Setting the cans on the countertop, to SCOUT): Grace told us this was wanted.

SCOUT (taking the cans): Thanks.

BELLA: Try to save some for the customers.

JOSH (kissing CAROLINE’s cheek): Help us plan the _Rag_ ’s first summer issue?

CAROLINE: You thought I only came for your body? ...  (To BELLA:) Come with. … (Approaching the booth:) Hi Gordon, Paul. Missed you at dinner.

GORDON: Sorry, Caroline. Flight delay.

WENDY: So Caroline … Nancy says you interviewed Finn and Monica.

CAROLINE: (sliding into the booth): I did. Where is she?

JOSH (sliding in next to CAROLINE): Back table, with Tom.

WENDY: So what’s this summer’s offering?

CAROLINE: _Two Gentlemen of Verona_.

SUSAN: With Jacqueline as Julia?

BELLA (standing near the booth): Gotta love tradition.

PAUL: Not the Bard’s best work.

CAROLINE: Maybe better than people think, Paul.

GORDON:  Another Rawley Shakespeare Company surprise?

JOSH: There always is.

SUSAN: What?

CAROLINE: Off the record, till opening night, next month – Proteus isn't Valentine's only boyfriend.

WENDY: Speed?

BELLA:  Nope.  

GORDON (grimacing): Thurio?

CAROLINE (softly, but melodramatically):  "What light is light, if Krudski be not seen?  What joy is joy, if Krudski be not there?"

PAUL (after a pause, shocked):  Will signed up to do _that_?

BELLA:  Not yet.  Jacqueline wanted to part of persuading him. ... (To SUSAN:) Want in on that?

SUSAN:  Oh yeh.

WENDY:  Definitely.

BELLA: Then get your boyfriends to join the cast.

SUSAN (grinning wickedly first at PAUL, then at GORDON:) Are male leads wanted?

BELLA: Already lined up.

CAROLINE: Apparently Hamilton and Forrest had a very good year.

BELLA (to GORDON and PAUL):  But we need a Speed and a Lance. ... (To JOSH:)  And a Duke.

GORDON:  Still straight parts? ... I mean, erotically? 

BELLA:  Totally.  With Scout as Thurio.  And me as Lucetta.

WENDY (wincing):  Ouch! ... The girl who says that true love never speaks in words?

BELLA:  If Will's willing to play his part, Scout and I'll be humbled with him.

JOSH (smiling):  True love.

BELLA:  No comment.

JOSH: Count me in.

PAUL:  Me too.

GORDON:  And me.  But why?  All your surprises turn out to be things Shakespeare may really have done.  So why ...

BELLA:  You'll hear it in bed.  When we tell Will.

SUSAN:  A good night?

CAROLINE:  Very.

WILL (approaching, kissing BELLA): Hi, beautiful. … Your kingdom for a coffee?

BELLA (taking the stool vacated by GRACE): Sadly, until episode four, all my kingdom buys is …

SCOUT: One Coke, coming up. (He goes to draw one.)

WILL (order pad in hand): Caroline, what could I get you?

CAROLINE (ogling JOSH): Hmmm … A strawberry ice cream sundae, whipped cream on top, fudge sauce on the side, please.

SUSAN (to CAROLINE): You’ll share?

CAROLINE (finger-grazing PAUL’s chest): If you and Wendy will.

WENDY (looking at JOSH): I think Susan and I could deal with that.

WILL (scribbling): I’ll be back.

SCOUT (serving BELLA’s Coke): To end the winter of your discontent.

BELLA: Thanks. … (To HAMILTON, eyeing his float): Vanilla. Throwing caution to the wind again, Ham?

JAKE (feeding a spoonful of her float to SEAN): He eats by the book.

WILL (to HAMILTON:) A backhanded compliment to your kissing, perhaps. … (To SCOUT, handing him CAROLINE’s order): Spindle that, please?

BELLA (to WILL): Nice scenery.

SCOUT (spindling CAROLINE’s order in the pass-through): Jacqueline needed a dry shirt.

BELLA: Grace told us. … (To SEAN, ruffling his hair:) Prince.

SEAN (kissing BELLA’s hand, looking at LIZ): Only because princesses have loved me.

BELLA (to WILL, pulling him to her): Ya know, if you’d taken your shirt off, I might have gotten the message.

WILL: I was on duty.

BELLA (setting a hand on the counter): And it was more fun to let me spend the summer wondering whether I was in love with my half-brother.

WILL (shrugging): All you had to do was inquire. Test of true love.

SCOUT (to BELLA, taking her hand): Which you and I flunked.

WILL (caressing SCOUT’s forearm): Somebody had to. Parallel contrasting story-lines – “heaven under our feet” versus reality, where no one ever quite loves well enough.

JAKE (also caressing SCOUT’s arm): And Scout, you wouldn’t have flunked it if Bella’d needed you as desperately as I needed Hamilton … if she’d been as screwed up as I was … hacking, switching schools, cross-dressing. But she never despaired of true love.

SCOUT (squeezing WILL’s hand): ‘Cause at the moment when she most needed love, the perfect guy had given her a bag of heart-shaped candies – and his heart with it.

BELLA (looking into WILL’s eyes): And then I took him for granted for ten years.

HAMILTON: He survived – he had Faulkner. … Ow!

LIZ (to HAMILTON, her nails leaving red marks in one of his biceps): He had you, tosser. He had faith. … (Smiling at SEAN:) And Bella got a very nice consolation prize.

BELLA (to SCOUT): And you got a great consolation prize.

SCOUT (wrinkling his nose, looking at PAIGE Bennett in booth four): Paige?

BELLA: Will.

JAKE: Totally Feng Shui.

SEAN: And very hot.

LIZ (to SEAN): That’s my line, boy.

SEAN (to LIZ, wrapping WILL’s and SCOUT’s hands in one of his): Take a number.

HAMILTON: And Scout, when you finally woke up to the fact that there was a girl who did need you as much as Jake needed me, you did pass the test.

JAKE: It just took you a while to get the symbolism.

LIZ: You weren’t Bella’s half-brother – you were meant to be her brother-in-law.

WILL: So it wasn’t a “lie direct” – just a “lie circumstantial.”

SCOUT (to WILL): You could have just told me.

WILL: And deprive the viewers of seven episodes of delicious angsting?

SCOUT: They don’t want angsting. They want true love – Jake and Hamilton.

WILL: Well, that’s the trick, isn’t it? Always leave ‘em wanting more. … (Grazing SCOUT’s hand with a finger:) Like I do with you, roomie.

SCOUT (looking into WILL’s eyes): There are sundaes In the pass-through. (He disengages and moves down the counter to check on other customers.)

JAKE: Four sundaes.

BELLA: With whipped cream.

JAKE: Two with fudge sauce. One with … caramel?

LIZ: For our friends in booths two and five?

WILL: Uh, yeh. … (Disengaging from BELLA:) Duty calls.

GINA: Will, when you have a minute …?

BELLA (ogling LUKE): One sundae, surprise flavors, lots of whipped cream, peeled bananas, either fudge or caramel sauce with a little of the other on the side?

GINA: A mind reader. … Will, you should let Bella run the place.

WILL (rolling his eyes at BELLA): Coming right up. (He gets back to work.)

SEAN (to BELLA): You heard about Claudia?

BELLA: Ham and Jackie told me.

LIZ (to JAKE): So are Mark and Anne with Forrest?

JAKE: Uh … no.

BELLA: Then why aren’t you?

HAMILTON: We weren’t wanted.

SEAN (puzzled, to LIZ): What am I missing?

LIZ: Jack and Mary?

JAKE: Uh, yeh. Mark and Anne are manning the ferry.

BELLA: So that Jack and Mary can be with Forrest?

HAMILTON: Yeh.

LIZ (looking into SEAN’s eyes): That’s so sweet.

SEAN: Feeding him tea?

JAKE: That, and snuggling in his bed and watching _Dawson’s Creek_ with him.

HAMILTON: Having already phoned Lena and gotten her to fly back here early.

JAKE: According to Finn and my mom, who, thank god, are chaperoning them.

(BELLA, SEAN and LIZ crack up laughing.)

JAKE: What?

LIZ: It’s what they do.

SEAN: What their big brother and sister do.

LIZ: And they’re already almost as good at it as Ham and you are.

BELLA: And you’re already jealous.

JAKE: They’re totally out of control.

LIZ: Because you two are totally contagious.

SEAN: And nobody but you two is worried about it.

BELLA: Including your parents.

JAKE: They’ve hit on every couple in our crew.

BELLA: Sweetly.

HAMILTON: And you’ve all let them.

SEAN: They like to be held and nuzzled while they make out.

BELLA: And they’re good at it.

JAKE: That’s what we’re worried about.

BELLA: Jackie, they know the rules.

SEAN: And they don’t push them.

LIZ: They haven’t tried to do anything with any of us.

BELLA: Including their godparents.

JAKE: With whom they share a bed.

SEAN: Occasionally. It’s how they learn.

BELLA: And they couldn’t have better teachers than Ryder and Lena and Mark and Anne.

SCOUT (returning): Whom your parents totally trust.

JAKE: They want more.

SEAN: Of course they do.

LIZ: But they want it with you and Jacqueline holding them.

BELLA: So they’ll wait ...

LIZ: Till you’re not scared to be close to them.

SEAN: Which hurts them.

SCOUT: Badly. Your and Ham’s arms were, like, their favorite place – to hear stories, to watch movies, to cuddle each other, to fall asleep in.

SEAN: Then they hit puberty and you stopped touching them.

LIZ: You haven’t invited them to New Haven for a weekend since last fall.

BELLA: And they feel kinda like Will and I’d feel if you stopped touching us.

LIZ: Or Sean and I.

SCOUT: Or Grace and I. Only worse.

SEAN: Way worse.

WILL (returning, to BELLA): What are you ragging on Jacqueline about?

BELLA: Jack and Mary.

WILL: Oh …

JAKE: How are sundae sales?

WILL: You’ll find out when you get the tab.

JAKE: Firm but … responsive?

WILL (rolling his eyes): Something like that.

HAMILTON (turning his head toward a booth five): That is so raunched out.

SEAN: Ralph and Kyle seem to be enjoying it. And don’t even think about changing the subject.

WILL (to BELLA): Same old same old?

BELLA: Yeh. Jack and Mary are taking care of Forrest …

LIZ: And their siblings claim not to trust them …

SCOUT: When what they really don’t trust is themselves.

WILL (to HAMILTON): “Sometimes you just have to throw caution to the wind …”

SCOUT (to WILL): Thank you. I’ll cover the booths. … (Seeing more orders in the pass-through:) French toast at this hour?

WILL (rolling his eyes): Maple syrup.

(SCOUT, shaking his head, goes to load the plates from the pass-through onto a serving tray.)

WILL (to HAMILTON): You don’t have to do this alone. 

BELLA: We won’t let you do this alone.

SEAN: And we won’t let you screw your sister.

LIZ (to JAKE): Or you your brother.

SEAN: And you both know that.

LIZ: So that’s not what you’re scared of.

WILL (to HAMILTON): You’re scared of falling for a guy version of Jacqueline …

BELLA: Again.

LIZ (to JAKE): And you’re scared of falling for a girl version of Ham.

SEAN: And you will. And yeh, it’ll be a little minty. But what about this isn’t?

WILL: When magical enchantments no longer cut it to pose a test of true love …

BELLA: And you use cross-dressing instead …

WILL: It gets a little minty.

LIZ: Deal with it.

WILL (to HAMILTON): Unless you’d rather go back to kissing frogs or beasts or hideously ugly old hags.

HAMILTON: Uh … no.

(The front door opens and GRACE enters, carrying a paper bag, followed by ANNE Crompton, in a white summer dress and MARK Johnson, in white cotton pants and a short-sleeve white dress shirt.)

GRACE: Look what the cat dragged in.

HAMILTON: Anne!

JAKE: Mark!

HAMILTON (to LIZ): Excuse us?

LIZ (smiling): Go.

(HAMILTON and JAKE disengage from LIZ and SEAN and kiss ANNE and MARK – intensely.  WILL pulls in behind BELLA and SEAN behind LIZ, nuzzling.)

JAKE (breaking off from MARK): We heard you were manning the ferry.

ANNE (breaking off from HAMILTON): We were – till Ham’s parents relieved us.

SEAN (amused): The Dean and Kate are giving ferry rides?

ANNE: She doesn’t sing so well as her daughter.

MARK: And he doesn’t play guitar so well as his daughter’s boyfriend.

ANNE: But they get you across the lake. 

MARK: As Ham’s dad put it, he’s kinda short of useful work to do nowadays.

ANNE: And he and Kate thought the four of us might like to be together.

JAKE (smiling first at HAMILTON, then at her friends): We have a great family … all of you.

ANNE: And we’re all glad you’re back. … (Looking around the diner:) New dress code?

SEAN: Jacqueline’s collecting shirts.

MARK (to JAKE): Shortage of postage stamps?

JAKE (unbuttoning MARK’s shirt): There’s a problem with postage stamps.

MARK: E-mail?

JAKE (nuzzling MARK’s chest): You can only lick ‘em once.

GRACE: Yeh, about that … (Loudly, to the whole diner): Ladies, in honor of Jacqueline’s return – flavored whipped cream! … (Pulling three cans out of her bag and setting them on the counter near LIZ:) Blackberry … Amaretto … and Cinnamon Praline! … Free for everyone who’s ordered a sundae.

(From the diner’s female customers, cheers and whistles.)

GIRL IN BOOTH FIVE: Or French toast?

GRACE: Or French toast.

(More cheers.)

LIZ (to GRACE): Where did you get this?

GRACE: The mini-frig in my bedroom. I have a whipped cream addict to keep happy.

MARK (to SCOUT): Really? And you don’t share when we get together?

GRACE: Scout’s a little shy.

(SCOUT glowers at GRACE.)

LIZ (examining the cans): At least they’re not alcohol-infused. That stuff really tingles.

SEAN: Uh, discretion?

JAKE (removing MARK’s shirt): Yeh, and it’s not cheap.

HAMILTON: Jake!

JAKE (to SEAN): The drive-in business thrives, I gather.

SEAN: Enough so that Calhoun still won’t sell the twenty percent stake he got for co-signing the loan I took out to buy the theater.

SCOUT: That, McGrail, is how the rich get richer.

BELLA: And part of how our charter middle school gets funded. … (To GRACE): Shall we help our guys dish out the boy sauce?

GRACE: Good idea.

BELLA (taking WILL’s hand): Come with. We’ll squirt, you serve.

(BELLA and GRACE and WILL go behind the counter and begin dispensing flavored whipped cream.)

JAKE (handing MARK’s shirt to HAMILTON:) In my backpack, please?

HAMILTON (taking it, smiling at MARK): My pleasure. (He takes the shirt to the backpack.)

(JAKE, pulling MARK with her, returns to her stool, pats it. To MARK:) Time for the guys to sit, don’t you think, Liz?

LIZ (standing, looking at HAMILTON): Definitely. (She walks to stand by the seat vacated by BELLA.)

ANNE: For sure. … (Kissing SEAN’s cheek): Hi townie.

SEAN (kissing her back): Hi, prep girl.

SCOUT: Guys sitting, ladies standing … very bad form.

LIZ (to JAKE): He means he’d rather look at us than at them.

SCOUT: That too.

JAKE: Tell ya what, Calhoun. You don’t give us etiquette lessons, we won’t tell the whole diner where their flavored whipped cream comes from. Deal?

SCOUT: Have a seat, gentlemen.

MARK (to JAKE): No whipped cream.

HAMILTON (returning, to LIZ): Absolutely.

SEAN (sitting, to ANNE): Your wish is my command, beautiful.

ANNE: The perfect gentleman.

HAMILTON (sitting): Traitor!

SEAN: Anne and I have two twins to drive wild.

MARK (sitting): You don’t need whipped cream to do that.

SCOUT (placing napkins in front of SEAN and MARK): Anne, Mark, what may I get you?

ANNE (pulling in behind SEAN): What flavor whipped cream do you recommend?

SCOUT: Nice try. Not a chance.

ANNE (wrapping her arms around SEAN, sighing): I guess I’ll have to try all three, then.

SCOUT: Right. Three-flavors-of-whipped-cream entrée. And for dessert?

ANNE (to MARK): Milkshakes?

MARK: Sounds good. … (To SCOUT:) Make mine vanilla, please.

ANNE (caressing SEAN’s chest): And mine strawberry.

SCOUT: Coming right up. (He exits to the kitchen.)

HAMILTON (to LIZ): That is so not fair.

MARK (purring): Ham, I’m a bit part.

ANNE: And I’m not in the show at all.

LIZ (hand-grazing HAMILTON’s abdomen): You get to exemplify true love and personify the school that teaches it. They get to drink milkshakes.

HAMILTON (caressing LIZ’s arms): Mmmm … But they’re true love, too … for Jake and me …

JAKE (stroking MARK’s sides): But discreetly, Hammy. Off-camera.

LIZ: Without dithering about being gay for four episodes.

ANNE: Or pretending, for four more episodes, to care only about the body of a girl you went for thinking she was a guy.

JAKE: But if you were to change your mind about the whipped cream, Anne might let you have a sip of her shake.

HAMILTON (picking up his Coke float): Not happening. (He inserts a straw and begins sucking.)

JAKE: Mark?

MARK: Mmmm … You want a sip of my milkshake?

JAKE (nuzzling): I want you to throw caution to the wind.

MARK: Girl, I never had any caution to throw.

JAKE: With the whipped cream.

MARK: Fine, but it’ll cost ya.

JAKE: What?

MARK: Stop being a jerk to Mary and Jack. And get Fleming to do likewise.

JAKE (disengaging): Oh crap … You too?

MARK (to LIZ): You and Sean already started?

LIZ: With Scout and Grace, and Will and Bella.

MARK (to HAMILTON): Good.

HAMILTON: Guy, this is not what Jake and I need her first day back here … probably our only whole day when nobody’ll be watching.

ANNE: Be glad they’re not, Ham – ‘cause this is a pain to watch. … (To JAKE:) And you’re not really back. That’s the problem.

MARK (turning to face JAKE): It is. … (Pulling JAKE onto his lap:) Fourteen years ago, Anne and I fell in love because we were both in love with a couple who would never let seeming a little gay stop them from being truly loving.

SEAN: So did Bella and Will, and Grace and Scout, and Lena and Ryder, and Liz and I.

LIZ: And Josh and Caroline, and Paul and Susan, and Gordon and Wendy.

MARK: And Jennifer and Brandon, and Brooke and Stewart, who are all across the street tending the pumps so that Grace can be here with Scout and us.

(JAKE looks out the window to see two couples snogging under gas station canopy.)

ANNE (to JAKE): Not to mention Finn and your mom … (To HAMILTON:) And your parents falling in love again.

LIZ: And we want you back.

MARK: We want you to be yourselves. … Ham – you and Jackie are treating your siblings like you treated her before the cotillion fourteen summers ago. And that has to stop.

ANNE: Mark and I and Forrest and Lena have stood in for you while Jackie was gone. But if you don’t get close to Jack and Mary yourselves, now that Jackie’s here, you’ll seriously hurt them.

LIZ: And we’ll all lose a little of each other.

ANNE: We all know it’ll be hard – harder than any two-couple relationship that any of us have now.

LIZ: And not just because Jack and Mary are too young to do anything with either of you except to be held by you – although for now, that’s all they want.

MARK: It’ll always be hard. The closest thing any of us has to what Mary and Jack want with you in the long run is what Anne and I have with Liz and Sean. But Anne and Sean can do things – and, as you know, Liz and I like helping them do things – that Liz and I, being twins, can’t do.

BELLA: Whereas between you two and Mary and Jack, anything more than sharing a bed or one couple holding the other will have to be a little gay in order not to be incestuous.       

MARK: But Jackie, Ham – ask yourselves … if neither Anne and Ham nor Jackie and I could ever do more than kiss … if the only physical bonding our couples could have was between Ham and me, or between Jackie and Anne … would you want what we have to end?

JAKE (after exchanging a brief, worried glance with HAMILTON): Of course not. We love you.

HAMILTON: And we’ll take you any way we can get you.

JAKE: Including little or no sex at all.

HAMILTON: Which is kinda what we all expected we’d have by now if we hadn’t all stayed sixteen and here at Rawley forever.

JAKE: You’re not threatening to do that, are you? I mean, if Ham and I don’t …

ANNE: Never, Jackie.

LIZ: None of us would ever do that.

SEAN: But we _have_ done that with each other this term … from spring break till last night …

ANNE: Because we all wanted to see how hard it would be before we asked you to do something even harder.

MARK: And we thought it might help us learn how to help you better.

JAKE: You’re kidding. … (To SEAN:) You and Anne …

ANNE: Became twins for a term, yeh.

LIZ: Less hard for the four of us as it was for Scout and Grace and Will and Bella, or for Brandon and Jen and Stewart and Brooke.

HAMILTON (jaw dropping): Our whole crew?

SEAN: Except for Lena and Forrest, who were otherwise engaged.

ANNE: And we split into three two-couple groups – like you and Jack and Mary would be.

JAKE (to HAMILTON): True love.

HAMILTON: No joke. … (To MARK:) For whole term, you guys never cooperated … not even two of you … to give your girls your best?

MARK: Only when we spent a weekend with Jackie and you in New Haven.

SEAN: And that, obviously, was what we all missed most.

JAKE (to HAMILTON): No wonder last night was so wild! … (To MARK:) And I thought you were all just … unusually happy to see me.

(SCOUT emerges from the kitchen bearing a tray with two milkshakes, small dish of ice cream, and a large sundae cup wrapped in a napkin with a rubber band around it.)

ANNE: We were.

SEAN: Very happy.  

SCOUT (serving ANNE:) One strawberry shake … (Serving MARK:) One vanilla shake … (To Anne:) And, it being unthinkable to serve whipped cream unaccompanied, a scoop of vanilla ice cream, on the house.

ANNE: Thank you, vigilant guardian of good form.

SCOUT: We strive to maintain standards. … (To JAKE, serving her the sundae cup:) And this, Jacqueline, for you.

JAKE: What is it?

SCOUT (setting out two sundae spoons): A test of true love. … Grace, whipped cream, please.

GRACE (bringing a tray with three small dishes of whipped cream):  For which of our discerning patrons?

SCOUT: Anne.

GRACE (serving): Blackberry … Amaretto … and Cinnamon Praline. … (Ogling SEAN:) Enjoy.

ANNE: Thanks, Grace.

GRACE (confidentially): Scout’s particularly fond of the Amaretto.

ANNE: We’ll all bear that in mind.

(SCOUT glowers at GRACE. She kisses his cheek and goes back to the far end of the counter.)

JAKE (peeking under the napkin wrapping of her sundae cup): Calhoun, this looks suspiciously like a chocolate shake under a thin layer of vanilla ice cream.

SCOUT: Impossible. Shakes are served in glasses and with a straw. This is in a sundae cup and to be eaten with a spoon. However, should your boyfriend share your misperception …

JAKE: I might use it to change his mind about the whipped cream?

SCOUT: Your boundless power over Fleming will awe the whole diner. You will be beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love you and despair.

JAKE (looking sidelong at HAMILTON, sliding the sundae cup to him): I shall diminish, and pass into the West, and remain Jake.

HAMILTON (to SCOUT): Thanks.

SCOUT (clearing HAMILTON’s now-empty Coke float glass): Just use the spoon.

HAMILTON: Scout?

SCOUT: What, guy?

HAMILTON: When you can find time … would you, Grace, Bella and Will please join us for a moment?

SCOUT: Sure. (He walks to the far end of the counter.)

HAMILTON (to MARK, taking his disguised milkshake): You win.

JAKE: We’ll get close to Jack and Mary.

HAMILTON (his spoon digging a small hole in the covering ice cream): But we really will need help.

ANNE: You’ll get it.

HAMILTON (savoring his first spoonful): Mmmm … that’s so good.

(WILL, BELLA, SCOUT and GRACE approach, outside the counter.)

LIZ: That was fast.

GRACE: The customers seem content.

ANNE (looking around): Yeh, they do.

WILL: So what’s up?

JAKE: Hammy wanted to let you all watch a milkshake-induced male orgasm.

HAMILTON (to MARK): Shut her up, please?

MARK: Gladly. (He turns JAKE’s head to his and kisses her.)

HAMILTON: Anne, Mark, Liz and Sean just told Jake and me what you’ve all been doing this term – about Mary and Jack. And why. Thank you.

JAKE (breaking off): Truly. And we’ll do it.

WILL: Great!

SCOUT: And you’re welcome.

HAMILTON: So when’s our first date with our siblings – and some of our crew?

BELLA: When will Lena fly back here?

JAKE: Thursday.

GRACE: Then how about Friday evening?

JAKE: Sounds good.

HAMILTON (focused on his milkshake): Whatever. On this one, I’m just putty in your arms.

LIZ: You’re learning. … (To ANNE:) Pass the Cinnamon Praline?

HAMILTON: Within reason.

LIZ: Party pooper.

MARK (to JAKE): Seafood at Fanny’s, with the whole crew – courtesy of its new proprietor, yours truly?

SEAN: And after dinner – the drive in? Also _gratis_ , of course.

JAKE: With which of you?

SCOUT: The whole crew. We’ll take the limo.

JAKE (to SEAN): What are you showing?

SEAN: Double feature – _Cabaret_ and _City of Angels_.

JAKE: _Cabaret_ for twelve-year-olds?

WILL: Rawley twelve-year-olds. They’re exceptional.

JAKE: Yeh, they are. … We’re on, then. Thanks.

ANNE: Jackie – Jack and Mary should get a whole night.

MARK: Waking up in your arms …

BELLA: Morning play …

WILL: Breakfast.

SCOUT: Like a commitment?

JAKE (to MARK:) You and Anne and Forrest and Lena will do that with us?

MARK: Of course.

LIZ: But don’t even dream of cutting the rest of us out of that.

JAKE: Eighteen of us? Where? We can’t take two twelve-year-olds to the Inn. You plan to kick Finn out his suite twice in one week?

SEAN: No need to.

LIZ: Our drive-in mogul has a new apartment.

JAKE (to SEAN): Really?

SEAN: For special occasions. My parents are way too fond of Liz to let us move out before we need to.

BELLA: You know that building two blocks down Main Street with the tower that overlooks the whole town?

GRACE: Sean’s bought the top floor, and turned it into a loft apartment.

ANNE: And that tower-turret – with a 360-degree view of the town, the lake, and the school – is now wholly filled by a large, round bed.

JAKE (to LIZ): Comfy?

LIZ: Don’t know for sure. We’ve been waiting for a special occasion, when you’re here, to christen it.

SEAN: Preferably, this occasion.

JAKE (to HAMILTON): Exceeds expectations.

HAMILTON: Extremely.

WILL: So do Mary and Jack.

ANNE: And you and Jackie have no clue how much they love you.

JAKE: Sounds like we’ll find out Friday night.

MARK: You should know before then.

HAMILTON: Why?

SCOUT: ‘Cause you don’t wanna jump your sister.

ANNE: Jackie, three years from now, when Jack and Mary start prep school … they want Mary want to stand in for you.

JAKE (appalled): With Hamilton, while I’m gone? She’s his sister. She can’t.

MARK: No, not with Hamilton. At another school.

BELLA: Separated from Jack ten months a year.

GRACE: For seventeen years …

SCOUT: As long as you’ll have been separated ten months a year from Hamilton.

SEAN: So that you and Ham can be together.

LIZ (setting HAMILTON’s milkshake on the counter): And raise some kids.

WILL: And so that we all can raise some with you.

(JAKE and HAMILTON, jaws dropping, stare into each other’s eyes.)

HAMILTON: True love.

JAKE: The truest. … (To WILL:) Would that work?

WILL: If people watch it.

HAMILTON: You’d write it?

WILL: I’ve already started, obviously.

JAKE: But … no cross-dressing?

MARK: Mary will cross-dress at her winter school.

HAMILTON: Why?

ANNE: To make it possible for Jack to visit her on weekends.

SEAN: At her winter school, everyone will think they’re a gay couple.

LIZ: No pregnancy risk, parental consent, no rules against same-sex guests – no problem. 

JAKE: For seventeen years?

WILL: If the ratings are good. … You’re the almost-PhD in drama. Whad’ya think?

JAKE: I think no girl can cross-dress at boarding schools for seventeen years without getting caught.

MARK: Will and I have come up with a creative solution.

HAMILTON: What?

MARK We’ll hire a good private investigator in advance.

WILL: And we’ll only send Mary to schools where our private eye has found a skeleton or two in the closet.

MARK: Like maybe marital infidelity among faculty members or school administrators.

HAMILTON (grimacing): Ewww …

MARK: Yeh, we know. We’ll downplay that stuff in the show. And we’ll blackmail constructively. We’ll do what we can to set those situations right, in a way that hurts nobody.

WILL: But out there in reality, where people just don’t love as well as they do here at Rawley, things like that do happen. … (To JAKE:) See any other insurmountable problems?

JAKE (to HAMILTON): It could work. … (To WILL:) But seventeen years … You wanna take Jack and Mary all the way through grad school?

LIZ: Why not?

JAKE: Why would Mary need to cross-dress at university - where visiting boyfriends are not a problem?

GRACE: 'Cause she doesn't wanna do prep school twice.

ANNE: She graduates from prep school and gets into college with a transcript saying she's a guy ...

SEAN: So she has to keep on staging the act.

JAKE: Oh yeh ... (To HAMILTON:) One of the problems you saved me from ... 

HAMILTON: Would Jake and I still be in it?

MARK: Supporting roles – but useful for engaging mature viewers.

JAKE: But at the end … we’d be pushing fifty … and we’d still look seventeen.

WILL: Trust me, the viewers will not complain.

SCOUT: And the name of your plastic surgeon will remain a closely guarded secret.

GRACE: You’ll be raising your kids, who’ll obviously totally outfox you.

SEAN: ‘Cause your little brother and sister have totally outfoxed you.

LIZ: They’ve been planning to do this since last fall.

ANNE: The first time they really kissed – and committed – was right after they came up with it.

HAMILTON: They committed … deliberately … in order to be separated?

BELLA: Just like you did, the night of the summer cotillion, fourteen years ago – when you thought through how you’d heal Jacqueline, and make her leave Rawley, and bring her back – before you kissed her and committed to her the next morning.

HAMILTON: But I only planned to be separated from Jake for one year – not seventeen years.

WILL: That’s kinda the point – a couple that truly love each other can love other couples even better than one person can love another.

MARK: Because they have each other.

JAKE: Mark, it’s incredibly kind … (To WILL): And brilliant … and a wonderful fantasy … but Hamilton ...

HAMILTON: I know. We can’t let them do this.

SEAN: Ham, thirteen years ago, the night Jacqueline first came back here to do it all again, when we were all together, Will asked you how this ends.

LIZ: And you said, “Someone will dream a truer dream.”

BELLA: Maybe this is the truer dream.

WILL: “Young Americans – The Next Generation.”

GRACE: Dreamed by the couple most inspired by this one.

ANNE: And it is truer, Ham.

MARK: Being sixteen forever is great. But kids, who can change and grow in ways that we can’t, are better.

SCOUT: Which could be why most people aren’t sixteen forever.

JAKE: Scout – Hamilton and I get that. We want kids, too.

HAMILTON: But that doesn’t make this right.

WILL: Ham, we were all as skeptical about that as you and Jacqueline are.

LIZ: Until we held Jack and Mary and felt how much they need to do this.

GRACE: We think that not to let them would destroy them.

MARK: Like telling Jake, “I can’t do this,” at the cotillion – and then not changing your mind.

WILL: But the point’s moot. “Resistance is futile. You _will_ be assimilated.”

SEAN: Because it’s not your call.

SCOUT: You’re not Mary’s parents, or Jack’s.

MARK: And their parents are totally on board.

JAKE: They’re talked with our parents?

BELLA: It was their Christmas gift to your parents.

GRACE: Who’d kinda like some grandchildren.

ANNE: And who understand why Mary and Jack need to do this.

JAKE: Oh god … Why haven’t  they told us?

SCOUT: Because Mary and Jack asked them not to.

JAKE: Not our parents, Scout – our siblings.

MARK: Flat out? Because you and Ham weren’t ready.

ANNE: They don’t want you to love them because you’re grateful to them.

BELLA: They want you to love them because they love you.

LIZ: Which is why they need to do this.

GRACE: But they have kinda tried to tell you.

JAKE: When?

SCOUT: Most recently? Last night on the ferry. 

GRACE: Remember the song they played and sang for Ham and you?

ANNE: With candles in little in waxed paper bags set out all along the gunwales, to welcome you back?

SCOUT: “And I'd give up forever to touch you …

GRACE: ‘Cause I know that you feel me somehow.

LIZ: You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be …

SEAN: And I don't wanna go home right now.

MARK: And I don't want the world to see me …

ANNE: 'Cause I don't think that they'd understand.

BELLA: When everything's made to be broken …

WILL: I just want you to know who I am.”

JAKE (eyes tearing, rasping): Hamilton …

(MARK shifts JAKE from his lap to HAMILTON’s.)

HAMILTON (enfolding JAKE, to MARK): Thanks. … Will, could you get a couple of the guys in the booths to fill in for you and Scout for a while?

WILL: No problem.

HAMILTON (to BELLA): Then could we adjourn to your room over the gas station?

BELLA: Ham, I’d love to – but it’s occupied.

HAMILTON: Occupied?

BELLA: By Dawson and Jen. Will and I’ve got rooms at school, so we tucked them into my bed across the street at lunchtime.

GRACE: They’ve been out cold, reliving their show, since I got home from school. … You’re welcome to use my room, but as you know, the bed’s still a single …

BELLA: ‘Cause Grace and I do a scene in her room in episode four.

JAKE (pulling herself together): It’s OK. … I’ll be fine.

SEAN: My new place is just two blocks away.

JAKE (standing): Thanks, Sean, but let’s save that for Friday.

HAMILTON (to JAKE): Back to campus?

JAKE: Later. … (Handing HAMILTON his sundae cup:) Finish your milkshake. … Then we’ll go ask our siblings for the pleasure of their company Friday night.

HAMILTON: And kick them out of Ryder’s room.

JAKE: For sure. He’s ours for another three nights. … (To ANNE:) Come with?

MARK (pulling JAKE back onto his lap): Of course.

JAKE (snuggling into MARK): Mmmm … Scout, get Krudski to tend to his customers. In four years, he could have a kid to support.

SCOUT (grinning): Yes, ma’am.

(SCOUT and WILL quickly kiss GRACE and BELLA, then go back to serving the counter and the booths.)

ANNE (fondling SEAN’s chest): Gee, to finish three bowls of whipped cream before Ham finishes his shake … I’m gonna need some help. … Grace, Bella, what’s your pleasure?

GRACE: Inside of bicep with Cinnamon Praline.

BELLA: Neck with Blackberry.

ANNE: Hmmm … that leaves pectorals with Amaretto, doesn’t it? … Dig in, girls.

(They do. SEAN closes his eyes and purrs.)

HAMILTON: Uh, Bella, about Jen and Dawson …

BELLA: Mmmm?

HAMILTON: Couldn’t they spend the next four years in your attic?

JAKE: Where Jen’s spent the last eleven?

LIZ (nibbling HAMILTON’s neck from behind): Not very nice to wake up in an attic, Ham.

GRACE (enjoying her bicep): Much nicer to wake up in bed, in your lover’s arms.

HAMILTON (trying to focus on his milkshake): Uh, yeh, I know. …

JAKE (nuzzling MARK’s chest): Couldn’t we could carry them carry them downstairs from the attic the day before the next World Cup final?

MARK (his nose in JAKE’s neck, a hand sliding inside JAKE’s T-shirt to graze her side): Mmmm … We could, but we don’t need to do that. … (Whispering into JAKE’s ear:) Trust us.

(JAKE looks into MARK’s eyes, smiles, relaxes back into him.)

HAMILTON (sputtering): But Bella’s bed is where _we_ like to wake up … all of us … after someone watches us while we’re here … at the diner … or at the gas station.

BELLA: We know. … And you and Forrest were so cute in it this year. … (To ANNE): Pass the Amaretto?

LIZ (grazing HAMILTON’s abdomen with the back of a hand): And it’s a big bed, Ham – queen-size.

BELLA: My dad’s sixteenth birthday present to me. … (To ANNE:) Thanks.

LIZ: Couldn’t we share it with Dawson and Jen?

HAMILTON (grimacing): Ewww … While they’re reliving their show?

GRACE: Sean and Forrest and Mark and Lena and I enjoy sharing it with you and Jacqueline, and Will and Scout and Bella, during the episodes that we’re not in.

ANNE: And I enjoy it, even though I’m not in any episodes. … (To GRACE:) Try a pectoral?

HAMILTON: But Jake and I, and Bella and Scout and Will, all wake up at the end of each episode.

GRACE: Sometimes only for a few seconds, Ham, if someone’s watching more than one episode, or fast forwarding. … (To ANNE:) With Blackberry?

ANNE: Sure.

HAMILTON: It’s not the same. Jake and I like Jen and Dawson – a lot. But sharing a bed with a couple who’ll be comatose for four years would be …

JAKE (tonguing MARK’s neck): Creepy?

HAMILTON: Very. Thank you.

JAKE: Anytime. (She kisses MARK – and keeps on kissing.)

BELLA (tonguing SEAN's Blackberry-covered throat): The booths here are pretty comfortable, Ham.

HAMILTON (digging deeper into his sundae cup): They’re not a bed.

LIZ (engaging HAMILTON’s chest with a hand): They can be made to serve. Look around. … (Licking his ear:) Two dozen happy customers can’t be wrong.

HAMILTON (eyes closing briefly): Oh god …

SEAN (his hands reflexively caressing ANNE’s and BELLA’s heads): And even a stool can be amazing. …

ANNE (to SEAN:) Your stomach?

SEAN: Mmmm … 

ANNE (to BELLA): Some Cinnamon Praline, please?

SEAN (To BELLA): My mouth, beautiful. Any flavor you want.

BELLA: One pump-girl tongue with surprise flavor, coming up. … (To ANNE:) That enough?

ANNE: For now.

HAMILTON: And, uh, there’s no privacy here.

JAKE (briefly breaking off): Hammy, you’ve got all the privacy you could want. Nobody’s watching you eat that milkshake. Enjoy! … (She resumes kissing MARK.)

HAMILTON: Funny. … Look, Bella … I know it’s your bed … but we all kinda need it.  Jen and Dawson don’t. They’ll be reliving their show for four years.

BELLA: Maybe not, Ham. But talk with Grace, please. … (To SEAN:) Keep your eyes closed.

SEAN: Mmmm … Amaretto.

BELLA: Yep. And now me. (She kisses SEAN.)

HAMILTON: Grace?

GRACE (to ANNE): Think you and Bella can handle this without me?

ANNE: We’ll do our best.

(SEAN, kissing BELLA, gives GRACE’s head an affectionate caress. GRACE, disengaging from his chest with a love-bite, takes the single-scoop cup of vanilla ice cream and its sundae spoon from the counter.)

HAMILTON: So … Grace …?

GRACE: In a minute. … Scout?

SCOUT (approaching, behind the counter): What can I do for ya?

GRACE (offering SCOUT a spoonful of ice cream with amaretto whipped cream): First, eat.

SCOUT (eating it): Thanks.

GRACE: Now tell me … (Pointing her spoon toward HAMILTON:) What _isn’t_ wrong with this picture?

SCOUT: Oh … You mean the dork who’s so obsessed with whatever’s in his sundae cup that he’s ignoring a girl who loves him?

GRACE: Yeh, that one.

SCOUT: Not much.

HAMILTON (setting his sundae cup on the counter, to GRACE:) Thank you. … (Pulling LIZ onto his lap, locking foreheads:) I’m an idiot.

LIZ (taking the sundae cup, feeding HAMILTON a spoonful of milkshake): Eat.

JAKE (breaking off from MARK, to HAMILTON:) Better.

GRACE (handing the vanilla ice cream to MARK:) Cool that girl down.

(MARK takes the ice cream and begins feeding JAKE.)

GRACE (pulling in behind HAMILTON): Hamilton, we’re hoping that Dawson and Jen might get Sundays off.

HAMILTON: Sundays off?

SCOUT: It _is_ traditional.

HAMILTON: I’m aware of that. … (To GRACE:) But how?

GRACE (caressing HAMILTON’s arms, now wrapped around LIZ): Well, there’s nothing we can do about the DVDs of their show.

MARK: Except wait for them to get lost, scratched, or thrown out.

GRACE: But how are DVD sales doing nowadays?

HAMILTON: Badly. Streaming and iTunes are killing them.

GRACE: Right. But is every TV show streamed?

HAMILTON: No, only the most popular ones.

GRACE: Uh – huh. And _Dawson’s Creek_ is only streamed by Netflix. So what if someone hacked into Netflix to make Netflix management think that not many people are watching it streamed?

HAMILTON: Netflix would stop streaming it.

MARK (feeding JAKE): And if someone hacked into iTunes and tucked into each episode of _Dawson’s Creek_ a little code that would make it not play on Sundays …

SCOUT: Then only viewers who owned DVD versions – or had stored old iTunes downloads of it – could watch it on Sundays.

GRACE: And with DVD sales plummeting, and old DVDs getting lost, or scratched, or thrown out …

LIZ (feeding HAMILTON): Dawson and Jen will start to get some time off on Sundays.

SCOUT: Maybe just a few minutes at a time this year …

MARK: But more and more time every year …

LIZ: And eventually, whole Sundays off.

GRACE (stroking HAMILTON’s sides, nuzzling his neck): And even if they only do have a few minutes off, this year, wouldn’t it be nice if they could spend them in bed?

SEAN (breaking off from BELLA): Instead of in an attic?

HAMILTON: Yeh, it would … but … you can’t really be thinking of doing that … can you?

BELLA: Why not?

HAMILTON: Uh, because it’s illegal?

SCOUT: Questionable. Massachusetts has blue laws. There are Federal laws about overtime work. And property rights in involuntary servitude have been gone for a while now.

HAMILTON: And you’d need an expert hacker to do it.

SEAN: That’s right. … Anne, you might wanna stop now.

ANNE: Mmmm … Laundry problem approaching?

SEAN: Yeh. … (To HAMILTON:) But we have an expert hacker.

HAMILTON: Tell me you’re not thinking of asking Jake to do this.

ANNE (disengaging affectionately from SEAN’s six pack): No, Jackie’s been good …

BELLA: Ever since you got her to promise to stop hacking when you visited her in New York fourteen summers ago.

MARK: And we’ll never ask her to break that promise.

HAMILTON: Who, then?

SCOUT: Grace.

HAMILTON (to GRACE): You hack?

GRACE: For almost thirteen years now. … (Looking at JAKE:) And I learned from the best.

BELLA: Thirteen summers ago, when Jacqueline – except for re-enactment purposes – was rooming and working with Grace, at the gas station …

SCOUT: So that Jacqueline could cox our boat, and help you help Grace and me get together, before Jacqueline’s year of not being able to be enrolled at Rawley was up …

GRACE: While you preps were all in school, whenever there wasn’t a car to gas up, or a lube job to do … Jacqueline taught me to hack.

HAMILTON (not pleased, to JAKE): You didn’t.

JAKE: Hamilton, you never asked me not to teach it. And it’s useful, ya know?

WILL (returning): What’s the problem now?

BELLA: We just had to tell Ham that Jacqueline taught Grace to hack.

GRACE: In order to get him to stop asking Bella to move Dawson and Jen to the attic.

WILL: Oh. … (To HAMILTON): It’s necessary.

HAMILTON: You’ve known about this, too?

BELLA: We all have. Except for you.

GRACE: ‘Cause we didn’t want to make you pissed at Jacqueline.

HAMILTON (to WILL): And why is hacking so necessary?

SCOUT: Because we have … special needs.

HAMILTON: Like what?

LIZ: Dawson and Jen?

HAMILTON: Other than that.

WILL: Well, for example … You know those driver’s licenses we’ve all gotten in the mail every summer, ever since we turned twenty-two?  The ones that always say we’re twenty-one? 

HAMILTON: Oh …

BELLA: Think those are useful?  Like, more useful every year?

HAMILTON: Uh, yeh.

WILL: Uh – huh. Because?

HAMILTON: Because we look about seventeen or eighteen. It’s hard enough to get people to believe we’re twenty-one. If we tried using I.D. that says we’re twenty-nine, nobody would buy it.

SCOUT: No more train or plane travel, no more booze in New York or Boston, no more hotel rooms … “Special needs.”

ANNE: You think those licenses just come by themselves?

HAMILTON (shrugging): “The perfect people, the perfect life” … “this world where dreams really do come true.”

WILL: Rawley, yes. The Registry of Motor Vehicles, no.

HAMILTON (to GRACE): You’ve done that?

SEAN: That and more. Way more.

SCOUT: But not alone, and not on her own.

SEAN: The town government has a very discreet “special services” division.

SCOUT: To deal with our “special needs.”

GRACE: And you’re lookin’ at the head of it.

HAMILTON (after a pause): Impressive. Thanks.

GRACE: I get help. For the really hard problems. Like, from an outside consultant.

SCOUT: That’d be your girlfriend.

GRACE: Who really is impressive.

HAMILTON (looking at JAKE): No …

SEAN: Jacqueline doesn’t hack, Ham.

GRACE:  She just teaches me and my staff how to solve problems we can’t solve ourselves.

HAMILTON: That is such a subterfuge …

JAKE: You did notice that I spent two years studying this at MIT?

HAMILTON: But you were studying how to help organizations protect themselves from hackers.

BELLA: Fleming, it’s the same thing.

HAMILTON: Not morally. ... (To JAKE:) And I thought you ditched it ‘cause you decided theater was your calling.

ANNE: It is her calling.

MARK: You learned that the night of the cotillion, fourteen summers ago.  And Jacqueline’s known that almost as long.

SCOUT: But she took two years out to become a top-drawer hacker, for us – because it was necessary.

SEAN: Just like she taught Grace to hack because she knew we’d need a hacker.

HAMILTON: It’s still a subterfuge.

WILL: Like you’re above subterfuges? The way you brought Jacqueline back here?

HAMILTON: That was for love.

LIZ: So is what Jacqueline’s done, Hamilton.

WILL: And she’s done it well.

BELLA: You know how on the night of the cotillion, fourteen summers ago, you thought everything through – how you’d help Jackie heal, how you’d take her away from Rawley, how you’d bring her back again after a year – before you went to her the next morning?

HAMILTON: I had to. I couldn’t commit to her without a plan to help her, to stay together with her, to have a future with her.

ANNE: Yes, because you love her. And she couldn’t have come back here thirteen summers ago without a plan to help us. She thinks, Ham. Because she loves. Just like you do.

MARK: And this subterfuge was part of that plan.

SCOUT: Just like ratting your girl out in a letter that would never be opened, so that her leaving Rawley could pass as punishment, was part of your plan to bring her back here.

WILL: And if she’s brooding, scheming, calculating,

SCOUT: Conniving …

SEAN: Cunning …

LIZ: Deceptive …

MARK: Devious ...

GRACE: And wickedly ironic …

ANNE: It’s because she’s learned from the best –

BELLA: You, trickster.

SCOUT: And don’t tell us you never suspected any of this.

SEAN: That you really thought fake birth certificates, driver’s licenses, passports, medication prescriptions, hospital records, retirements, home sales, and death certificates – not to mention diverting old-age pensions to the schools – all took care of themselves.

HAMILTON: I’ve been pleased by the quality of municipal services.

WILL: Right.

HAMILTON (to JAKE): Just be careful. … (To GRACE:) Both of you.

JAKE: We are. … So can Dawson and Jen stay in Bella’s room?

HAMILTON: Sure. … (To WILL:) But it really would be nice to have a place we could use – like, closer than two blocks away. ‘Cause we don’t always have time …

WILL: We know.

SEAN: And we have a place.

HAMILTON: Where?

SCOUT: When you need to know, you’ll find out. … (Looking at the pass-through, to WILL:) Toast and bagels?

WILL: Jelly and cream cheese.

SCOUT: And eggs sunny side up?

WILL: Yolks.

SCOUT: Gross.

WILL: Paige and Joe, booth four. Joe’s not thrilled either. … Excuse me. (He scurries off.)

LIZ (to HAMILTON): Open wide. Last spoonful.

HAMILTON (after complying, to SCOUT): Seconds?

SCOUT: Mary and Jack?

HAMILTON: Oh yeh. … (To MARK:) How happy will they be about this?

MARK: Ecstatic.

HAMILTON (to JAKE): Maybe too ecstatic.

LIZ: Would you like Sean and me to chaperone them this evening?

JAKE (to SEAN): Would you?

SEAN: Our pleasure.

LIZ: And don’t thank us – it really is.

ANNE (to HAMILTON): Ready for a ferry ride from your parents?

HAMILTON: If they don’t serenade my girlfriend.

(From nowhere, Nick Drake’s [Pink Moon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sQv04CFSdE) begins to play.)

SCOUT: Oh no …

BELLA: Episode one.

JAKE (quickly standing): Yeh. Holiday’s over.

(LIZ, MARK, and HAMILTON stand.)

SEAN (standing): Will, over here on my stool, quick. I’ll cover the booths.

(WILL hurriedly serves the eggs to booth four and sets the serving tray on the counter. SCOUT walks out from behind the counter, pulling off his Friendly’s uniform shirt. LUKE and GINA slide out of their booth and stand.

JOE, the townie poker shark from episode six of the original drama, precipitously exits booth four. In booth five, KYLE Stratton, the unpleasant preppie diner customer in episode 2, and RALPH, from SEAN’s baseball team in episode 2, disengage from their girls and stand, hastily wiping their chests with napkins.)

WILL (pulling off his shirt, handing it to SEAN): Thanks, guy.

RALPH (walking to WILL): Sit. I’ve got you.

WILL (sitting down on SEAN’s stool, smiling): Ralph – still always on time. … Sean, put us in the small … (He goes limp.)

RALPH (pulling in behind WILL, holding him up): He’s narrating.

SEAN: Scout, you’ve got about twenty seconds. Bella, maybe forty.

HAMILTON: Scout, take my stool.

 LUKE (to SCOUT): I’ll tend the counter.

SCOUT (handing LUKE his shirt): Push the Coke.

LUKE: Always.

(SCOUT seats himself on HAMILTON’s stool.)

JOE (pulling in behind SCOUT:) I can get ya spiked whipped cream wholesale.

SCOUT: And egg yolks?

JOE (shrugging): I lost a bet. ... (To GRACE:) But if I’m holding Scout, Paige can’t make me pay up.

GRACE (looking JOE up and down): She’ll think of something. … (Taking SCOUT’s hand:) Go save Will from his dad-self. I’ll be here.

SCOUT: I know. (He slumps back into JOE.)

BELLA (sitting on the stool between WILL and SCOUT): Another opportunity to exceed expectations by seducing my putative half-brother.

HAMILTON: Just think about the end of the episode …

JAKE: Being carried out of the lake in Will’s arms.

KYLE (pulling in behind BELLA): And we’ll make sure that at the end of the episode, you _are_ in Will’s arms.

BELLA (leaning back into KYLE): Kyle, there’s a serious shortage of ass-bites in this town nowadays.

KYLE (nuzzling): Glad you didn’t fix my brakes?

BELLA: Very. … Be there with Julie when we wake up?

KYLE: Count on it.

BELLA (closing her eyes, relaxing into KYLE): Well, folks … see ya when I see ya.

ANNE: Soon, girl.

MARK: Like in no time at all.

LUKE (holding up SCOUT’s shirt, to SEAN): Restaurant inspectors during re-enactment?

SEAN (tossing WILL’s shirt on the countertop): Of course not. But preppies are preppies.

LUKE (tossing SCOUT’s shirt on top of WILL’s): Right.

SEAN: Jackie, Ham, we’ve got a couple minutes before your “Nice bike” scene … (To LIZ:) And your three seconds of fame.

LIZ: Ah, yes … as the central panel of the “Hello, Rawley Academy for Girls” triptych, the focus of a love god’s lust … (Looking askance at HAMILTON:) Until he ditches me for a biker boy.

JAKE (ogling SEAN): You’re complaining?

LIZ: Not about the outcome. But a girl has pride.

SEAN: So, Ham … would you like to see why we don’t need Bella’s bed?

HAMILTON (after exchanging a glance with JAKE): Sure. … Why?

ANNE: Because we have someplace better.

JAKE: Where?

LUKE (gesturing toward a door at the rear of the diner, opposite the kitchen side): Back there.

JAKE (nose wrinkling): The men’s room?

LIZ: Worked for you at the summer cotillion. … Ow!

SEAN (pulling in a lightly spanked LIZ): No, not the men’s room. You go through that door, the men’s room’s on the left. But there’s another door on the right.

HAMILTON: Yeh, to the bike shop. Or what used to be the bike shop, before … You’re kidding. … Will bought out the bike shop?

GRACE: Not Will.

JAKE: Scout?

SEAN: The town.

JAKE: For us?

MARK: For us – but not just for us.

LIZ: ‘Cause as you know, we sometimes don’t get much warning when someone starts watching us.

GRACE: Especially if they start in the middle of an episode.

KYLE (to JAKE): Like that time, during a parents’ weekend reception, when someone decided to watch just the last scene of the last episode – and you and Ham, and Bella and Sean, and Will and Scout all crashed to the floor of the girls’ school veranda – drinks spilling, glasses smashing …

LIZ: And Grace and I were left standing over our zonked boyfriends, trying to explain – “Perfectly normal, no cause for alarm …”

LUKE: And frankly, comatose kids being carried from here to Bella's room – or collapsing in the middle of Main Street while trying to cross it – has become a traffic hazard.

GINA: Ham, remember how three years ago, in mid-winter, when somebody started watching episode six, and you and Will – ‘cause it was Will’s year with you – couldn’t make it through the snowbanks and over the ice to cross the street in time, and Mrs. Richardson totaled her SUV and brought down a lamppost …

HAMILTON: Uh, yeh.

SEAN: We had to call a town meeting. And the town voted to do this.

JAKE: Then let’s go see our new crash pad. ‘Cause Hamilton, Liz and I are gonna need it in about half a minute.

MARK: Sure, but you’ve got time, Jackie. I don’t hear any music.

ANNE: “Pink Moon” has stopped playing, “Stroll in the Park” hasn’t started playing yet …

MARK: And Will’s mom and Charlie are across the street talking with Jen, Brooke, Brandon and Stewart.

JAKE: Oh yeh … Someone’s letting the dog out.

JOE (still holding SCOUT): Or making popcorn, getting a beer, lighting a bong, maybe …

PAIGE (from booth four): Joe!

JOE (shrugging): Whatever.

HAMILTON: Sean, I go to the town meetings. I don’t remember the one you’re talking about.

SEAN: We held it during your spring break, a few weeks after Mrs. Richardson’s car crash.

GRACE: While Scout and I took you and Jacqueline and most of our crew to St. Martin.

MARK: We all wanted it to be a surprise for you and Jacqueline.

SEAN: And it’s time to show you it to you. … Come with. … (Loudly:) Everyone … The Small Town Common is about to be inaugurated.

(The customers applaud and cheer, the girls clean their guys up a bit, and – except for RALPH, JOE and KYLE, holding WILL, SCOUT and BELLA on their stools – they all stand and follow as SEAN and LIZ lead JAKE, HAMILTON, GRACE, ANNE and MARK into the rear passageway.)

SEAN (opening the door): We hope it will feel familiar.

JAKE (squeeing): Oh my god! Hammy, it’s the Rawley Boy’s common room – in miniature!

LUKE: About three-fifths scale.

HAMILTON: Yeh, same hearth, same floor-to-ceiling wood paneling … wainscoting … beadboarding … hand-crafted woodcarving, and … How did you do _that_?

SEAN: What?

HAMILTON: The windows. What’s out in front is really Main Street – but what I see is the rear garden of the boys’ school. And what’s back there is an alley – but what I see is the lake. And the tree branches move, like in a breeze. And when I move … the perspective changes.

SEAN: They’re not really windows.

HAMILTON: Obviously. The front of this store has been bricked up for two years, with a “closed for remodeling” sign on it.

SEAN: And that’s the way it’ll stay.

LIZ: We’re not really sure how it’s done, Ham. Some friends of Will’s did the windows. He said they’d done something a lot like it in some old warehouse in downtown Baltimore. 

ANNE: But we do have real windows … (Pressing a switch:) Although not in the walls.

JAKE: Oh wow – skylights?

MARK: Two, each with three layers, each separately retractable – you can cover them, or have glass, or screens – or nothing.

JAKE (smiling at HAMILTON): Stars overhead at night.

SEAN: But for obvious reasons, what little furniture there is, is modular, and the floors are tile covered with upscale gym mats.

NANCY: And for winter, the floor’s heated – like at the girls’ school.

HAMILTON: Sweet.

GRACE: And the closet’s large, and full of quilts and cushions.

LUKE: And it comes with all the Coke you can drink.

JAKE (laughing): It’s perfect. … (To the crowd:) Thank you – all of you.

HAMILTON: I think we may have some chances to do that.

GINA: That is kinda the idea.

SEAN: We drew the line at paintings of race horses and fox hunts – a townie pride thing. We hope the prints of clipper ships and whalers will do.

JAKE: They’ll do beautifully. … (To HAMILTON:) Shall we tuck Will and Scout and Bella into it?

HAMILTON: Definitely.

JOSH: Caroline and I’ll put out some quilts and pillows for you.

 (The crowd of couples parts to allow GRACE, HAMILTON, JAKE, SEAN, LIZ, MARK and ANNE to walk back toward the counter. They pause briefly to admire their three slumping friends on the stools, BELLA between WILL and SCOUT.)

HAMILTON: Sean, carry Bella, please?

SEAN: Twist my arm.

HAMILTON: Mark, take Scout?

MARK: My pleasure.

HAMILTON (ruffling WILL’s hair): I’ll take our old dreamer.

JAKE (to GRACE): And you get a free ride.

GRACE (putting her arms around JAKE’s neck): Aw … You wanna carry me over the threshold?

JAKE: Just jump me.

(GRACE complies, wrapping her legs around JAKE’s waist and locking lips with her. RALPH, KYLE and JOE help HAMILTON, SEAN, and MARK lift WILL, BELLA and SCOUT into their arms.)

HAMILTON (cradling WILL, softly): “Weave a circle round him thrice, for he on honeydew hath fed, and …”

(From nowhere in particular, Hans Zimmer’s “[True Romance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq5kbNW8VKU)” theme begins to play.)

LIZ: Oh crap …

ANNE: The “Nice bike” scene.

RALPH: Somebody fast-forwarded.

SEAN: Set ‘em back down, quick!

JAKE (breaking off from GRACE):  Gotta go.

GRACE (disengaging): Break a leg!

(HAMILTON, hurriedly handing WILL back to RALPH, stumbles. JAKE catches him.)

HAMILTON (to JAKE): Nice save. (He kisses her briefly, then slumps into her arms.)

MARK (taking HAMILTON from JAKE): Somebody get Liz!

LUKE: (holding LIZ from behind): Got her!

LIZ (melodramatically lifting hand to forehead): My moment of glory! I swoon. (She does.)

SEAN (pulling JAKE close): Go get him, beautiful.

JAKE: Sean …

SEAN: He’ll wake up in your arms. Promise.

(JAKE kisses SEAN’s neck, rests her head on his shoulder, and nods off. JOSH and CAROLINE emerge from The Small Town Common.)

CAROLINE (surveying the scene): That is _soooo_ rude!

JOSH: Fast-forwarding through everything but the Jake and Hamilton scenes? No joke.

GRACE: Scout and Bella kinda like it.

KYLE: But the viewer misses half the symbolism.

ANNE: And the whole contrasting story-line.

GINA: And who can appreciate heaven without earth?

JOSH: Drama criticism and theology later, OK? Right now –

          Take up the bodies: such a sight as this  
          Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.

WENDY (laughing): It is kinda like that, isn’t it?

SEAN: Let’s get ‘em into the common room.

PAIGE: Whoa! Not so fast, boy. Unless you want whipped cream all over the common room.

SEAN: Paige, give us a break.

PAIGE: You want the girls here to keep voting for you for selectman?

SEAN: Uh, yeh.

PAIGE: Then wait a while. ‘Cause we definitely have time for a quickie. Like, Scout with Cinnamon Praline? … (To GRACE:) With your permission.

GRACE: Go for it. … Will with Blackberry?

GINA (to ANNE): Hamilton with Amaretto?

ANNE (to MARK): That does sound kinda nice.

JULIE (KYLE’s girlfriend from booth five): And with Mark – after he leaves us for the lake run, about a minute from now – maple syrup mixes well with plain whipped cream.

MARK (holding HAMILTON): Hamilton, Scout and I do not get group whipped-creamed in public, thank you. We’re preppies.

KYLE (still holding BELLA): So am I.

MARK: You’re new money, Stratton. We’re old money. … (To the girls:) And we’ll be re-enacting.

RALPH’S GIRLFRIEND: That’s what makes it so much fun. Guys who are re-enacting are more … uninhibited …

OTHER GIRL FROM BOOTH FOUR: Responsive.

FIRST GIRL FROM BOOTH TWO: And we know you all like to be held, and cuddled, and kissed, and teased a little while you re-enact …

SECOND GIRL FROM BOOTH TWO: Especially while you’re doing stuff like falling for your half-sister …

PAIGE: Or for a girl you think is a boy …

MARK: Yes, but without whipped cream.

GINA: Chocolate syrup?

MARK: No.

JOE (still holding SCOUT): Ya know, I’ve been thinking of running for selectman.  And I’ve got some ideas. Like, this town doesn’t have a legal casino. Or a topless beach on the lake. Or …

MARK (still holding HAMILTON): Alright! … Here’s the deal. After the lake run, you all can do with me anything that’s cool with Anne. But Scout, Will and Hamilton go into the common room, with Bella and Jacqueline and Liz, and Grace and Sean. With no toppings or flavorings. … And at the end of the episode, they wake up holding their girls.

HAMILTON (nuzzling MARK’s neck): Mmmm … true love.

GRACE: He’s breaking the fourth wall.

SEAN: He’s the Executive Producer. He gets to do what he wants.

CAROLINE: Josh, maybe you should take Ham before Mark nods off at the Lake Run.

JOSH: Glad to. (He takes HAMILTON from MARK.)

PAUL: Sean, I can take Jackie. Maybe you should close up.

SEAN (relinquishing JAKE to PAUL): Good idea, thanks. (He walks behind the counter.)

PAIGE: Gina, Julie, a little help with Mark, please? … (Pulling in behind MARK:) Don’t worry. Ham will wake up very sure he’s not gay.

GINA (hand-grazing MARK’s abdomen): Scout and Bella will wake up not feeling in love with a half-sibling.

JULIE (nuzzling MARK’s shoulder): Will won’t feel too weird about being an almost-sixty-year-old guy going to prep school.

PAIGE (to JOE): And we’ll all keep voting for Scout and Sean.

JOE (sighing): Life’s a bitch.

(As Sean carries a sign from behind the counter to the front door, “Six Packs” by The Getaway People begins to play.)

PAIGE: Right on cue. … Re-enactors to the common room, please, gentlemen. Mark, on the stool.

JULIE (to MARK): Remember not to run all the way to the lake.

GINA: You stop on the veranda – to start your long history of going off-script …

ANNE (taking MARK’s hand): Consoling Jackie.

MARK (on the stool, to ANNE): And being given you.

(Kissing ANNE, MARK slumps back into PAIGE as the lyrics of the song start and MARK’s trousers and shoes fade away, leaving him in white running shorts.  RALPH, JOE, LUKE, PAUL, JOSH and KYLE, having picked up the other re-enactors, start to carry them toward The Small Town Common.)

RALPH (hunched over, carrying WILL, as WILL’s jeans and shoes fade out, leaving him in white boxers): Man, I wish we could turn that god-awful song off.

JOE (carrying SCOUT on his back, SCOUT’s jeans also fading off white boxers): Or that they didn’t play it every episode.

LUKE (his arms cradling LIZ, now in only bra and panties): Well, we can’t and they do. Suck it up.

PAUL (cradling JAKE, still skirted and shirted): It’s not really their fault. It’s obvious they’d have liked that Dylan song on Finn’s chalkboard for the theme song. But Dylan songs cost big bucks.

JOSH (piggybacking HAMILTON, who is now in red boxers): Yeh, gotta sell a lot of Cokes to cover one of those.

KYLE (cradling BELLA, still in tank-top and cutoffs): Man, they shoulda just asked. I mean, Scout’s dad, Mark’s dad, your dad, my dad, any of them …

(The six guys lugging re-enactors exit to The Small Town Common.  SEAN, having hung the sign on the door, locks it, walks toward GRACE.)

SEAN: Grace, shall you and I join Scout and Liz?

GRACE (grazing the back of SEAN’s hand): I dunno, Sean. My boyfriend looks so blissed out while he’s falling for my sister … kinda creepy.

SEAN (nuzzling): Maybe I could take your mind off that.

GRACE: You’re so thoughtful.

SEAN: Maybe I could even get a little help from some of the guys here … unless they’d rather lick whipped cream off Mark than do that or help Bella, Liz and Jacqueline feel supported and appreciated.

GRACE: Mmmm … I guess we’ll just have to see, won’t we?

SEAN: Then, Miss Banks, may I please have the honor of carrying you over the threshold – since your last ride didn’t work out so well?

GRACE (wrapping her arms around SEAN’s neck): Actually, that’s worked out just fine.

(SEAN lifts GRACE up.)

GRACE (cradled in SEAN’s arms): See ya when we see ya, guys.

(SEAN carries GRACE into the common room.)

GORDON: Hmmm … Tough choice.

WINSTON: Agonizing.

GORDON: I mean, Mark’s cute.

FRANK: Really cute.

JIM: And whipped cream’s so … creamy.

TOM: But Grace and Liz and Bella and Jacqueline need us.

GORDON: Yeh, the stress and trauma of having your guy fall for your sister …

WINSTON: Of being dumped for a biker-boy …

JIM: Of learning that the guy you’ve just fallen for is your half-brother …

GORDON: Of pretending to be a boy at an all-boys’ boarding school …

FRANK: Feeling totally unloved …

JIM: Unlovable …

TOM: Rejected, wounded …

GORDON: Self-destructive …

WINSTON: And compassion can rule passion. That’s the whole point, right?

GORDON: It is.

JIM: But it’s hard.

FRANK: Really hard.

WINSTON: I know. But we’ve gotta try.

JIM: If it’s too hard, can we come back here and lick whipped cream off Mark?

GORDON: For sure, buddy.

JIM: Then let’s do this. … (To GORDON:) Steady me?

GORDON (wrapping an arm around JIM’s shoulders): I’ve gotcha, guy. … (Leading him toward the common room:) Just don’t think about what we’re givin’ up.

FRANK (leading them): Yeh, think about burgers …

WINSTON (following): Lobster rolls …

FRANK: Fourth of July pie eating contests …

TOM (also following): Coke. How it fizzes, kinda tingles on your tongue …

(GORDON, FRANK, JIM, WINSTON and TOM, watched by their girlfriends and the other girls, solider on into the common room.)

JULIE: Such hams.

WENDY: Right on the mark, girl.

PAIGE: That she is. … So, Anne, how would you like to serve your boyfriend?

ANNE: With strawberry. Mark’s definitely a strawberry kind of guy.

SUSAN: Strawberry topping?

ANNE: We can do better than that, Susan.

GINA: How?

ANNE: It doesn’t just come on sundaes. It also comes as a breakfast topping – like, instead of maple syrup. And if maple syrup mixes well with whipped cream …

OTHER GIRL FROM BOOTH FOUR: Of course … (To PAIGE:) Why didn’t we think of that?

PAIGE: Uh, ‘cause it has big chunks of strawberry in it? And they’d fall out and make a mess?

RALPH’S GIRLFRIEND: And our guys would not have been happy?

FIRST GIRL FROM BOOTH TWO: And we didn’t wanna have to pick the berry pieces out?

OTHER GIRL FROM BOOTH FOUR: Oh yeh …

ANNE: And for a little spice, we could throw in some cinnamon red-hots …

NANCY: In honor of Will and Bella?

ANNE: Uh – huh. Scout keeps a jar of them in the kitchen – for special occasions.

GINA: That’s so sweet …

SECOND GIRL FROM BOOTH TWO: Yeh, great idea.

ANNE (to CAROLINE): Come with. We’ll get them, some strawberry topping, plain whipped cream, a bowl. Then …

(The door to the kitchen opens, and the Rawley GROUNDSKEEPER emerges, clad in cook’s whites and apron and bearing a large bowl full of pink whipped cream in which cinnamon red-hots and large chunks of strawberry are visible, and from which the handle of a wooden mixing spoon protrudes.)

GROUNDSKEEPER (setting the bowl on the counter near ANNE): Enjoy! (He returns to the kitchen.)

WENDY: Good old Haggerty.

CAROLINE: Always there when we need him.

SUSAN: And never when we don’t.

ANNE (taking the mixing spoon): Yeh … (Tasting the whipped cream): Mmmm … (Offering CAROLINE a taste:) What d’ ya think?

CAROLINE (after tasting): Very Mark … with just a hint of Will.

ANNE (Putting the spoon back into the bowl): Isn’t it? … (Holding out the bowl:) Help yourselves, girls!

JULIE: Uh … the running shorts?

RALPH’S GIRLFRIEND: We can screen him …

ANNE: A little later … after they’re nicely pinked.

FIRST GIRL FROM BOOTH TWO: You want them strawberry-stained?

GINA: That stuff’s hard to get out.

ANNE: Mark has more.

PAIGE: Ah … a memento.

ANNE: A gift for Jacqueline … as soon as nobody’s watching. I think she’ll appreciate it. Don’t you, Caroline?

CAROLINE: Definitely. You’ll give Mark’s strawberry-stained running shorts to Jacqueline, Grace will tell her and Bella about the little sacrifice Mark made for Hamilton, Scout, and Will … they’ll all whisk Mark and you off to the boy’s school … and I expect you’ll both have a very good night.

NANCY: Whereas without some strawberry stains on those shorts Anne would have to do the polite thing, and pretend this never happened.

SUSAN: And then, when Grace told Jacqueline and Bella about Mark’s courteous gesture, they and their guys would all feel grateful to all of us for having been dumb enough to let Mark out of it …

WENDY: And they might waste time thanking us and our guys in the common room.

ANNE: Possibly. … (Again holding out the bowl:) So, who’d like to start?

PAIGE (after exchanging blank stares with GINA, JULIE, and the other townie girls, to ANNE): Fox.

CAROLINE (wrapping an arm around ANNE, to PAIGE): Compassion _can_ rule passion – but it has to be cunning, calculating, conniving …

NANCY: Brooding, crafty, scheming …

SUSAN: Deceptive, dissembling, devious …

WENDY: In sum - ironic.

CAROLINE: _That_ ’s the whole point.

WENDY (wrapping an arm around SUSAN): And couples … or groups of couples … can do it even better.

ANNE (using a finger to scoop onto MARK’s neck a small dab on strawberry-cinnamon whipped cream containing no berry chunks or red-hots, to PAIGE): Taste.

PAIGE (sucking it off): Mmmm …

ANNE: Better than egg yolks?

PAIGE: Much. ... Seconds?

ANNE: In the common room.

PAIGE: No way!

ANNE: Has anyone said we can’t?

PAIGE (sputtering): Uh, no … but …

WENDY: Even though our new common room  _looks_ like our boys’ school common room …

ANNE: Where Finn has been a little unhappy with Joe and you more than once …

SUSAN: And where the Dean would skin us alive for having a whipped cream party …

CAROLINE: ‘Cause of the parquet floors, Afghan carpets, and leather furniture …

WENDY: "It's not what it looks like."

NANCY: It has indestructible, easily-cleaned plastic furniture and floors …

SUSAN: Thanks to the sixteen-year-old hormones of our selectmen …

ANNE: Who would definitely enjoy helping Joe find out how you taste with strawberry cinnamon.

(From nowhere, Zimmer’s “[True Romance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq5kbNW8VKU)” theme again starts to play.)

JULIE: Rowing practice.

RALPH’S GIRLFRIEND: Yep.

GINA: The rooftop kiss isn’t far off.

OTHER GIRL FROM BOOTH FOUR: And Hamilton shouldn’t be alone for that.

FIRST GIRL FROM BOOTH TWO: Neither should Jacqueline.

SECOND GIRL FROM BOOTH TWO: That kind of chemistry takes a whole town …

GINA: Holding them, making them feel appreciated.

WENDY: And Scout needs us.

SUSAN: And Will needs us.

JULIE: The sound we should be hearing is opportunity …

RALPH’S GIRLFRIEND: To dream dreams worthy of us …

JULIE: And not worry whether we’re worthy of the dream.

PAIGE: Yeh … Anne, which part of Mark would you like to lug?

ANNE: I’ll take the bowl.

PAIGE: Do I detect a lack of trust?

ANNE: It’s a work in progress. … Gina, Julie – the arms?

JULIE: Still ours when we get inside?

ANNE: If you don’t drop him. … Susan, Wendy – the legs?

SUSAN (to WENDY): Good view.

WENDY: Uh – huh.

ANNE: Paige, Caroline – a little support in the midsection?

PAIGE: How considerate!

ANNE (shrugging): Joe and Josh are cute.

(GINA, JULIE, PAIGE, CAROLINE, WENDY and SUSAN gently lower MARK off the stool and into their arms.)

ANNE: Nancy, his head, please?

NANCY (moving between GINA and JULIE): Thanks.

ANNE (to CAROLINE): Shall we make Finn proud?

CAROLINE: Why not? … (Looking down at MARK:) “Lady of Shalott”?

ANNE: Nah – way too sad. … (Spooning two small dabs of strawberry-cinnamon whipped cream onto MARK’s pectorals):

            Tell me, ye merchants’ daughters, did ye see  
            So fair a creature in your town before?  
            So sweet, so lovely, and so mild as he,  
            Adorned with beauty’s grace and virtue’s store?

CAROLINE: His cheeks like apples which the sun hath rudded,  
                 His lips like cherries charming us to bite …

SUSAN: His breast like to a bowl of cream uncrudded,

WENDY: His paps like lilies budded.

ANNE (spooning a dab onto MARK’s abdomen):

               But if ye saw that which no eyes can see,  
               The inward beauty of his lively sprite,  
               Garnished with heavenly gifts of high degree,  
               Much more then would ye wonder at that sight.

NANCY: Then would we wonder and his praises sing,  
             That all the woods should answer and our echo ring.

ANNE (motioning the girls toward the common room, following behind them):

              Open the temple gates unto my love,  
              Open them wide that he may enter in,  
              And all the posts adorn as doth behoove,  
              And all the pillars deck with garlands trim.

WENDY: We choristers the joyous anthem sing,

SUSAN: That all the woods may answer and our echo ring.

(The six girls bearing MARK exit to The Small Town Common, ANNE and the other girls following.

The camera pans out from the diner, centered on the sign hanging on the door:)

 

**CLOSED**

for re-enactment business

 

 

Scout Calhoun (Mark Famiglietti), Bella Banks (Kate Bosworth)  
and Will Krudski (Rodney Scott)    
closing scene of episode six of _Young Americans_

Screenshot at top is of   
Hamilton Fleming (Ian Somerhalder) and Jake Pratt (Katherine Moennig)  
opening scene of episode six of _Young Americans_

*          *          *


	7. Scene 7 - Epilogue

EXT – QUAD OF YALE UNIVERSITY’S HALL OF GRADUATE STUDIES. DAY.

(A sunny early-September afternoon.  Couples sprawl on the lawn of the quad – one notably younger than the rest.

JACK Pratt lies face-up, his shirt and one arm pillowing his head, his other arm holding a copy of _The Count of Monte Christo_ open on his chest. Beside him, MARY Fleming, in jeans and short-sleeved white blouse, textbook and notebook open, pencil in hand, tries to focus on math coursework.)

JACK: Wouldn’t you be more comfortable studying in my sister’s suite?

MARY: And less productive. Studying in public is good.

JACK: Come on, this was only the first week of school. It can’t really be that bad.

MARY: You’re not taking honors math.

JACK: And that assignment’s not due till Tuesday.

MARY: I’ll get more assignments Monday.

JACK: What does pre-algebra have that I don’t have?

MARY: Problems that stay finished for more than five minutes after I finish ‘em?

JACK (looking sidelong at her): Someday you’ll complain less about that.

MARY: So I’ve heard. … Re-read your novel.

JACK: It sucks even worse the second time. The guy’s still in the Chateau d’If.

MARY (looking at him): Can’t be. You’re two-thirds of the way through it.

JACK: I mean emotionally. The revenge thing. He needs to get a life.

MARY: He does, at the end.

JACK: I know, but that’s still almost two hundred pages away.

MARY: It could be worse. You could be re-reading _The Red Pony_. Like you’ll be next month.

JACK: Don’t remind me.

MARY: If you hadn’t bagged the honors program you wouldn’t have to re-read stuff we read last year.

JACK: And if you bagged it with me you wouldn’t have to work so hard.

MARY: You, fellow faculty brat, are pretty much guaranteed admission to Rawley. But I have to be able to get into the best prep school we can find whose headmaster is up to no good.

JACK: Mary, it doesn’t have to be the best. We’ll be sixteen forever in a small town. We can afford to opt out of the rat race.  

MARY: The snootier the school I cross-dress at, the more people will watch the show.

JACK: People will watch you no matter where you are. It This’ll be hard enough for you without making the schoolwork really hard too.

MARY: And if a really hard school’s the only one we can find whose headmaster’s cheating on his wife or something?

JACK (sighing): I miss summer.

MARY: We’ll miss it more in three years, boy.

JACK: All the more reason to make the most of the present.

MARY: We will … later.

JACK: How many homework assignments from now is that?

MARY: Not many. … Our siblings are taking us to dinner at the Union League Cafe.

JACK: What makes you think that?

MARY: I don’t fall asleep as fast as you do.

JACK: I kinda like Mory’s.

MARY: You like the Indian Pudding.

JACK: You like the singing.

MARY: I suspect we can have both – after dinner.

JACK: And I didn’t bring a blazer.

MARY: You have a foresighted girlfriend.

JACK: You packed one for me?

MARY: I snooped after I heard we’d be going to a place neither of us had brought clothes for. Your blazer’s in my brother’s suitcase – with your cravat.

JACK: I don’t own a cravat.

MARY: I think you do now. And I found something new, and too small for your sister, in her closet.

JACK (cocking an eyebrow): Hot?

MARY: You’ll find out at dinnertime. … And there’s something interesting in the refrigerator.

JACK: I didn’t notice anything.

MARY: You never open the vegetable drawer.

JACK (hopefully): Bread pudding from Marjolaine’s?

MARY: Two orchid corsages.

JACK (closing his book): Really?

MARY (setting down her pencil): You’ve noticed that, for the first time since we’ve been thirteen, we’re in Connecticut? … Where …?

JACK: Two thirteen-year-olds can legally have sex.

MARY: "Heaven under our feet as well as over our heads."

JACK: "This world where dreams really do come true.”

MARY: “Somewhere over the rainbow.”

JACK: “The perfect life” …

MARY: With “the perfect people.”

JACK (after a pause): What was Krudski _thinking_?

MARY: When he put Rawley in a state where we’re supposed to wait till we’re sixteen?

JACK: Yeh.

MARY: A secret known only to the Coca-Cola marketing division.

JACK: Let me walk you back to the suite. I should do a little shopping.

MARY: At a pharmacy?

JACK: Uh … yeh.

MARY: Jack … if our siblings have thought of orchids, I think we can trust them to have thought of that, too. … And maybe we should act, well … 

JACK: A little surprised?

MARY: Uh - huh. But …

JACK: Not too surprised.

MARY: Yeh. … Kinda sad, though, that we don’t have anything to give them.

JACK: Maybe we do.

MARY: What?

JACK (digging a mobile phone of a jeans pocket): Some good news … (He fiddles briefly with the phone. Reading:) Like, “[Netflix dumping Dawson?](http://theodysseyonline.com/charleston/netflix-dumping-dawson/65492)”

MARY: Oh my god … They did it?

JACK: You really, really wanna know?

MARY (holding out her hand): Give.

JACK (rolling over to lie next to MARY, one hand holding the phone in front of her face, the other rubbing her back): “On September 19th Netflix is doing the unthinkable, removing the six seasons of the beloved teen drama, _Dawson's Creek_ , from its library.”

MARY: Project “Sundays Off” is a go!

JACK: Looks like it. “Netflix instant streaming gave us the chance to relive our favorite episodes at the click of a button … But on Friday, September 19th, we will all be forced to bid adieu to Dawson and the gang.” … (Closing and pocketing his phone:) Just came up Thursday.

MARY: You’ve been sitting on this for two days?

JACK (nuzzling): Can’t afford to squander what few bargaining chips I have.

MARY: You have plenty to bargain with, boy. … (She kisses JACK. Eventually breaking off:) Jacqueline and Hamilton don’t know?

JACK: I haven’t told ‘em. … Tonight?

MARY: Grrrrr … (She resumes kissing.)

JACK (breaking off:) Mary?

MARY: Mmmm?

JACK (looking into her eyes): Monday … if I still can’t get you to make it easier on yourself … I’ll switch back into the honors courses with you.

MARY: I know.

JACK: That transparent?

MARY: I have an unbeatable ally.

JACK: Mmmm … _The Red Pony_?

MARY: Testosterone. Shall we move this to Jacqueline’s and Grace’s suite?

JACK: Thought you’d never ask. … (Picking up the shirt, books and notebook:) I wish I’d brought my guitar.

MARY (sitting up): An irresistible urge to serenade me?

JACK (standing): Not you. … (Offering her his hand:) An old friend.

MARY (taking it, standing): Who?

JACK: Honors English?

MARY: Whom.

JACK: Someone I’ve kinda neglected … taken for granted … just assumed would be around for a while. … Remember that song they play in episodes two and eight? … (Walking backward, leading her toward the Hall of Graduate Studies, [singing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABa21BVPLcY):)

             I think about you every day (goodbye)  
             On ragged roads to better days (goodbye)  
             I see your picture in my head (goodbye)  
             I think I'll miss you  
             But you'll never see me again

MARY: Your friend’s leaving?

JACK (pulling her close): Tonight, forever, I think. But I’m looking forward to one last memory of kissing him goodbye.

MARY (disengaging slightly): Pratt, did you just serenade … ?

JACK: The guardian of your virtue.

MARY: In front of a dozen people, in the middle of the Yale grad school quad.

JACK: I’m a hopeless Romantic.

MARY (running a finger over JACK's lips): Let’s find go find a good use for an old friend of _mine_. ... Could be his last solo performance for a while.

JACK (wrapping an arm around her): Only in Connecticut.

MARY: Which we are. … So why don't we just … go solo together?

JACK (walking her toward the door of the Hall): It's a date.

 

*         *          *


End file.
